Data Certification Impact on Health Information Retrieval

Abstract

The Web is being increasingly used by health consumers to search for health information. In this domain, the quality of the retrieved contents is crucial to avoid healthcare hazards. To address this problem and help the user identify reliable and credible contents, initiatives have appeared that certify the compliance of health websites to quality standards. In this work we explore the impact of medical certification on several aspects of health information retrieval performance. Moreover, we analyze the usefulness of certification categories to the personalization of the search experience. Our findings suggest that medical certification might be incorporated as a ranking criterion. We conclude that the medical accuracy of the resulting knowledge is enhanced by the use of certified information and depends on the users’ comprehension of the document. In general, we also conclude that there is space for personalization in search by health consumers.