medsearch vaishnav janardhan coms e6125 web-enhanced information management
TRANSCRIPT
Need for a medical search engine
Nearly 1/3rd of Americans suffer from one or the other chronic illnesses8 in 10 Internet users have looked online for health information. That translates to 95 million Americans who use the Internet to find health information.The key difference here is to give specific answers rather than throw out hundreds of linksNot to replace the doctor, but it should help the user in deciding between, visiting the local drug store to calling 911
Doc please help, Am I dying?….
Information / decision supporting material
Communication with other patients
Advice
Advertising and Sale
guidelines, clinical studies, decision aids, health information, information about pharmaceutical drugs, information about patient‘s rights, information about health politics, research findings, ............
Self help initiatives, medical organizations, patient counsellors, …….
newsletter, mailing lists, chats, ……..
Wellness-products, books, drugs,…………
Which kind of information support consumers may find on the internet?
And a lot of rubbish!
What do users look for? Identify disease type based on
the symptoms
Look for immediate medication
based on symptoms
Side effects of medication
Prevent drug overdose
Evidence based decision aids
Patient experiences
Online tutorials
Guidelines / Medical Journals
Requirements of medical search engine
Authority
Confidentiality
Attribution
Justifiability
Transparency of authorship
Transparency of sponsorship
Honesty in advertising &
editorial policy
How Search Engines Work
Catalog the data from reliable source
Send out software robots (or spiders) to crawl the data, add new journals reports, and update keyword indices
Link across multiple resources
How MedSearch works Reduce long plain English sentences to specific
key words Often the user is uncertain about his questions and
unfamiliar with medical terminology. Specific boxes or drop down menus should be provided
to make the query specific Determine all the terms to be included
Remove all irrelevant and duplicate information Determine which search feature should be applied
(i.e. AND, OR) The feature should depend on the specific symptom or
any other relevant information
How MedSearch works Include relevant background
information to the search query The background information include age, gender, race, current
location, recent unique activities, any new cuisine tried, vaccination history (flu vaccination), recent ailments, previous medical history (include all previous medical test results) into the search queries
Evaluate the produced search result for Reliability, credibility, purpose of the website, validity
(how latest), if it has been reviewed?
Displayed the produced results and help the user to decide the subsequent steps
MedSearch results
The search results should be organized
To describe how each treatment works
To describe the benefits of each treatment
To describe the risks of each treatment
Should describe what would happen if no treatment is taken
Should describe how the treatment choices affect overall quality of life
Searching is an iterative process..
What’s the cure for AIDS?
AIDS is caused by HIV
What’s the cure for HIV?
No cure, but treatments…
Best treatments for HIV?
Components of MedSearch•At a minimum, both the physician (+team) and patient (+family, social context) are involved in the decision–making process
•Both the physician and the patient share information
• All the test results, X-rays, Ct scans results would be attached to the user’s profile
•Both take steps to participate in the decision-making process by expressing treatment preferences
•A decision is made and both agree on the treatment (or deferment)
„It takes two to tango“
A common usage scenario of MedSearch
Doctor of an elderly patient who has hypertension, congestive heart failure, sleep apnea, and obesity
Has updated all recent diagnosis, relevant information like drug allergies and all test results
Now wants recommendations from a new-study with overview of supporting evidence
Later wants to explore recommendations in more detail, including the review of clinical trials it has included
May want basic review of topics seen infrequently in practice