Cost, Service Comparison Sites are in the Pink

Venture capitalists are pouring healthy doses of cash into consumer health web sites, revitalizing a boom-time sector that nearly wasted away during the dot-com bust. Healthline Inc., a 40-person San Francisco restart, hauled in $14 million in January from VantagePoint and JHK Investment. The medical search engine helps consumers find information, in part, by matching everday words to medical terminology. Five million visitors viewed pages on the site more than 20 million times in the second quarter of 2006, roughly double the number of visitors and page views from the previous quarter.