Collaborative search in electronic health records

J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2011 May 1;18(3):282-91. doi: 10.1136/amiajnl-2011-000009.

Abstract

Objective: A full-text search engine can be a useful tool for augmenting the reuse value of unstructured narrative data stored in electronic health records (EHR). A prominent barrier to the effective utilization of such tools originates from users' lack of search expertise and/or medical-domain knowledge. To mitigate the issue, the authors experimented with a 'collaborative search' feature through a homegrown EHR search engine that allows users to preserve their search knowledge and share it with others. This feature was inspired by the success of many social information-foraging techniques used on the web that leverage users' collective wisdom to improve the quality and efficiency of information retrieval.

Design: The authors conducted an empirical evaluation study over a 4-year period. The user sample consisted of 451 academic researchers, medical practitioners, and hospital administrators. The data were analyzed using a social-network analysis to delineate the structure of the user collaboration networks that mediated the diffusion of knowledge of search.

Results: The users embraced the concept with considerable enthusiasm. About half of the EHR searches processed by the system (0.44 million) were based on stored search knowledge; 0.16 million utilized shared knowledge made available by other users. The social-network analysis results also suggest that the user-collaboration networks engendered by the collaborative search feature played an instrumental role in enabling the transfer of search knowledge across people and domains.

Conclusion: Applying collaborative search, a social information-foraging technique popularly used on the web, may provide the potential to improve the quality and efficiency of information retrieval in healthcare.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Academic Medical Centers
  • Computer User Training / methods*
  • Diffusion of Innovation*
  • Electronic Health Records*
  • Humans
  • Information Dissemination*
  • Information Storage and Retrieval
  • Michigan
  • Search Engine*
  • Social Support*
  • Sociometric Techniques
  • User-Computer Interface