Reformulation of consumer health queries with professional terminology: a pilot study

J Med Internet Res. 2004 Sep 3;6(3):e27. doi: 10.2196/jmir.6.3.e27.

Abstract

Background: The Internet is becoming an increasingly important resource for health-information seekers. However, consumers often do not use effective search strategies. Query reformulation is one potential intervention to improve the effectiveness of consumer searches.

Objective: We endeavored to answer the research question: "Does reformulating original consumer queries with preferred terminology from the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus lead to better search returns?"

Methods: Consumer-generated queries with known goals (n=16) that could be mapped to UMLS Metathesaurus terminology were used as test samples. Reformulated queries were generated by replacing user terms with Metathesaurus-preferred synonyms (n=18). Searches (n=36) were performed using both a consumer information site and a general search engine. Top 30 precision was used as a performance indicator to compare the performance of the original and reformulated queries.

Results: Forty-two percent of the searches utilizing reformulated queries yielded better search returns than their associated original queries, 19% yielded worse results, and the results for the remaining 39% did not change. We identified ambiguous lay terms, expansion of acronyms, and arcane professional terms as causes for changes in performance.

Conclusions: We noted a trend towards increased precision when providing substitutions for lay terms, abbreviations, and acronyms. We have found qualitative evidence that reformulating queries with professional terminology may be a promising strategy to improve consumer health-information searches, although we caution that automated reformulation could in fact worsen search performance when the terminology is ill-fitted or arcane.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Consumer Behavior
  • Humans
  • Information Services / standards*
  • Internet / standards*
  • MedlinePlus / standards
  • Patient Education as Topic
  • Pilot Projects
  • Unified Medical Language System / standards*
  • User-Computer Interface