Why query annotations may help in providing accurate public health information

The mobility era has highlighted the importance of information providers to better understand the needs of the information seekers, even when the user interaction becomes less verbose. This is even more important in contexts like health care, where an understanding of the users' language and intentions is critical to provide accurate health information. To study the used language we utilize an annotation-based method to analyze if the seekers' language deviates from the health care professionals', and the one found in medical terminologies and information sources. By an analysis of the use of a major public Swedish health information portal we present, in our opinion, a surprising overlap in the language used by laymen and professionals, thereby supporting the use of terminology-based annotation to facilitate improved information retrieval in this setting.