MedSearch

Vaishnav JanardhanCOMS E6125 Web-Enhanced Information

Management

Why another search engine???

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 are you looking for?

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

Apprehensions about online medical search

•The medical history of the patient should be secure•The medical data should be protected from unlawful accesses•Medical search engine should not replace a primary care physician but should help in organizing the data for better health care