《考研英語(yǔ)閱讀理解100篇 高分版》 Unit 10 - TEXT FOUR

Back in 2000, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, described a grand vision for the future of health care. One day, he said, everyone would have a secure and private website on the Internet on which their doctors could post their “scans, lab results, test results, visit minutes”, and to which the owner could grant certain people access, to view some or all of that information. His ideas met with guffaws from the old lags of the industry, who have seen many fancy schemes for electronic medical records fall flat. America's health sector is simply too balkanised and too paper-based to stitch together easily in digital form. Even Mr. Ballmer conceded back then that he was searching for the “holy grail” of healthcare.
And yet, after years of frustration and furious development work, Microsoft now believes it has realised Mr. Ballmer's dream. On 4th October, the software giant was poised to unveil its new health-information product at a big event in Washington, D.C. It is called the Health Vault, in keeping with Microsoft's promise to make storing data on the Internet just as secure as keeping it in a bank. Health Vault will store all its customers' health data, ranging from test results to doctors' reports to daily measurements of weight or blood pressure, online. Individuals then have access to those records anytime, anywhere, via the Internet—a great boon for those who travel a lot. Medical offices and hospitals who sign up for the service could easily send test results in digital form to the vault, and patients could authorise them in turn to have access to various, carefully circumscribed bits of their personal data.
Microsoft was also set to announce this week that several dozen manufacturers, hospitals and charities have signed up for Health Vault. Big names including the American heart, diabetes and lung associations, the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, and Omron and Texas Instruments, in addition to various firms devoted to the craze for “wellness”, are all now on board, and are expected to announce products and services shortly. If the software giant has really found a hacker-proof way of storing records online, then the benefits of Health Vault are clear. But use of the vaults will be free both for the individuals that sign up for them and for the vendors and doctors that provide services based on the information they contain. So how will Microsoft make any money?
Sean Nolan of Microsoft explains that the business model depends on one thing: targeted search. Microsoft is betting that people will use its Health Vault Search to find out about their ailments. This service relies on an approach known as “vertical search” which attempts to provide more relevant results than generalist search engines like Google and Yahoo!by specialising in a particular field. The firm's recent acquisition of Medstory, a vertical-search engine focusing on health care, has given it a boost in this area.
Health Vault's search engine would definitely work better than those of rival sites if it could examine users' health records and past queries, and thus provide the responses that are most relevant to each individual's situation. But in order to attract any users in the first place, Microsoft has promised to enforce strict privacy rules. These would preclude such data-mining.
1. The old lags of the industry did not think highly of Ballmer's scheme because _____.
[A] Ballmer's scheme sounded too fantastic and far-fetched to be true
[B] Ballmer lacked technology proof to back up his ideas
[C] They had witnessed too many failures of attempts to realize such schemes
[D] America's health sector is too stubborn and is reluctant to change for the digital
2. Which one of the following statements is NOT true of Health Vault?
[A] Individuals can have access to the medical records of anybody anytime via the Internet.
[B] Those who travel a lot will greatly benefit from services of Health Vault.
[C] Hospitals who sign up for the service could improve their efficiency by Health Vault.
[D] Health Vault is a software invented by Microsoft.
3. The main problem Health Vault faces is _____.
[A] that it will be difficult for Vault to make profit during the beginning phase
[B] that the software may be trapped in the dilemma of customer privacy and convenient data search
[C] that it has to adopt the “vertical search” which is not the company's strength
[D] that Microsoft does not have powerful search engines as Google and Yahoo! do
4. Microsoft will make money in Health Vault by _____.
[A] attracting customers by the enforcement of strict privacy rules
[B] providing a charging platform for the communication of patients and hospitals
[C] cooperating with big hospitals and charities by providing useful customer information
[D] providing highly specialized service with high efficiency
5. Compared with Google and Yahoo!, the advantage of Health Vault Search is _____.
[A] that its technology far advanced that of the other two
[B] that it is more effective for those who need a special aspect of information
[C] that it specializes on the information of ailment diagnosis
[D] that its business model is more promising and profitable