User experience evaluation of Google search for obtaining medical knowledge: a case study. (1st January 2011)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wang, Liupu; Wang, Juexin; Wang, Michael; Liang, Yanchun; Xu, Dong
• Is Part Of: International journal of data mining and bioinformatics. Volume 5:Number 6(2011)
• Page Start: 626
• Page End: 639
• Publication Date: 2011-01-01
• Subjects: internet search -- page ranking -- Google -- medical information -- health information seeking -- breast cancer -- SNOMED -- user experience evaluation -- usability testing -- Hallway testing -- software engineering; Data mining -- Periodicals; Bioinformatics -- Periodicals; 006.312
• DOI: 10.1504/IJDMB.2011.045414
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1748-5673

Abstract

More and more people use internet search engines, especially Google, to learn about diseases and possible treatments. We conducted a hallway testing to evaluate the effectiveness of Google in obtaining medical information. We searched 'Breast Cancer' using Google. Six volunteers scored their experience for each of the top 500 websites. Our study shows that 50 hits of Google often help lay users in getting medical information, but some highly useful websites may be buried beyond top 200. Hence, the specificity of using Google in searching for medical information is satisfactory while the sensitivity of the search has significant room for improvement.