Microsoft Corp. has recently announced that it will buy Medstory Inc., a California-based start-up company that develops Web search technology for medical information. Microsoft has taken this decision to buy a small consumer health Web-search service as part of a broader plan to push into healthcare software and Internet services. Steve Ballmer, chief executive of the company, announced the acquisition of Medstory Inc. at a healthcare conference in New Orleans.
The deal is the fresh move by Microsoft into medical information sector, which the company envisages to redefine the sector with the same approach Microsoft brought to software for personal computers. Doctors, hospitals and other healthcare facilities are at present using a host of different software programs that evidently fall short of standard ways to input and retrieve healthcare records.
Microsoft refrained from disclosing the financial arrangements and details of the deal. It further stated that Medstory’s search engine is more discerning than normal Web queries and helps consumers to find more relevant information available on the Web and in medical journals.
Medstory, a closely held startup in Foster City, California is at present running a free search site, which provides results from the Web and from select health and medical sources.
