Healthline has dipped it’s hand into a $21 million series B financing led by GE/NBC Universal’s Peacock Equity Fund, a joint venture between GE Commercial Finance’s Media, Communications and Entertainment business and NBC Universal. This is on top of their $14 million round last January. The round also includes smaller investments from Aetna Ventures, LLC, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, U.S. News and World Report, and previous investors VantagePoint Venture Partners and Reed Elsevier Ventures.
They’ve also struck some deals with Aetna, AOL, Ask.com, and NBC Universal’s iVillage Total Health to use their search and navigation technology. AOL used to have a content deal with WebMD, has since opted for other content partners, with Healthline joining to power their search.
Health search remains a strong vertical because searching for health related info doesn’t simply use keywords, but include symptoms and related diseases. There are a host of other health search engines in this space. Microsoft’s recently acquired their closest competitor, Medstory, which competes directly with Healthline’s recently released symptom search. Other search engines include Healia, Kosmix, and even health meta-search engine Mamahealth.com. Google has their own lesser known health search engine based on the Co-op platform.
Dude I reallly blush to point this out but you should use a spell/grammar checker on occasion!
… and yes, I see I made a typo. It’s a tiny tricky keyboard I’m using
Yeah, Healia was recently sold for an undisclosed amount to Meredith, the Des Moines, Iowa-based publishing giant that operates magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens, Parents and Ladies’ Home Journal.
I’d really like to see a system that indexed all my health info. They’d have to get the major insurance companies to participate, but I’d give my permission. Not only would this allow me to see better my record, but doctors could see it (if I gave permission) and it could be used for statistical analysis (e.g. to locate high rates of cancer, etc. associated with certain geographical climes).
honestly 35mm?
How much you need to mash up webMD with Topix?
boring… and sad