NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Google’s latest move in India may help increase access to healthcare information among millions of people. The company added healthcare information to its knowledge graph in the U.S. last year, to help people easily find quick information in response to symptoms or concerns via its search engine, and now the feature is headed east to India.

The company, which operates India’s two most visited websites according to Alexa, will now serve users of Google’s main search engine (on all platforms) and its search apps for iOS and Android with data on over 400 health conditions in English and Hindi when they search for an illness or symptom.

“Next time you ask Google about common health conditions, we’ll show you information cards with typical symptoms, as well as details on how common the condition is — whether it’s critical, if it’s contagious, what ages it affects, and more,” the company explained in a statement.

The cards include images and can be downloaded as PDFs who can easily be passed on to someone else, perhaps a family member or friend. Google said that it will serve ‘lite’ versions of the cards if a user is on a limited internet connection, as can happen in places like India.