Health and medical search: talk with Vint Cerf

Last Thursday, I had an opportunity to talk with Vint Cerf before he started his presentation at the monthly speakers series at Google NYC.

I mentioned that I was doing a survey of the various search engines for health and medical topics, and was curious about the progress of Google Health. While he wasn't directly involved with this project, he did tell me an anecdote where a Google search made a difference in the management of a pediatric case.

It seems a child had swallowed some magnets, and the mother was concerned so she called her family doctor. The advice given to her was that she shouldn't be concerned as the magnets would pass eventually. As it turns out, these magnets were the very strong rare earth magnets that are part of a toy building set which is now flagged as dangerous by various reports including this article from the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, "Magnetic Foreign Body Ingestions Leading to Duodenocolonic Fistulas." The mother found early reports of this problem by doing a Google search.

It highlights the needs to be able to search for emerging phenomena, by doing a sensitive and comprehensive search of all material posted on the Web that might be working their way to the clinicians. Of course, in some cases the information may need to be substantiated. But in this circumstance it was the health consumer informing her doctor about the best course of action in managing a potentially serious complication.