Patel Chintan O, Garg Vivek, Khan Sharib A
Applied Informatics Inc., New York, NY.
AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2010 Nov 13;2010:597-601.
The Internet has become a common source for consumers to seek health information across a wide range of topics including searching for clinical trials. However, not much is known about what consumers search for in relation to clinical trials and how they formulate their search queries. In this study, we use log file data from TrialX.com, a consumer-centric website that provides clinical trial information to ascertain patterns in consumer queries. We analyzed semantic patterns in the queries by mapping query keywords to the UMLS Semantic Types and performed a manual evaluation of user paths. We found that the queries can be grouped into combinations of information needs related to condition, location and treatment. The results also suggested that the consumers using longer search queries with multiple Semantic Types are more likely to take action to participate in clinical trials. The study provides early insights that can be used to inform changes in website content and information display to improve clinical trials information seeking.
互联网已成为消费者获取广泛健康信息的常见来源，包括搜索临床试验信息。然而，对于消费者在临床试验方面搜索的内容以及他们如何制定搜索查询，我们了解得并不多。在本研究中，我们使用了TrialX.com的日志文件数据，这是一个以消费者为中心的网站，提供临床试验信息，以确定消费者查询的模式。我们通过将查询关键词映射到UMLS语义类型来分析查询中的语义模式，并对用户路径进行了人工评估。我们发现，查询可以分为与病症、地点和治疗相关的信息需求组合。结果还表明，使用具有多种语义类型的较长搜索查询的消费者更有可能采取行动参与临床试验。该研究提供了早期见解，可用于指导网站内容和信息展示的更改，以改善临床试验信息搜索。
