Web to world: predicting transitions from self-diagnosis to the pursuit of local medical assistance in web search.

Many people turn to the Web for self-diagnosis and healthcare assessment based on limited knowledge of signs, symptoms, and disorders. Studies of search and browsing for healthcare information have shown that reviewing Web content can lead to escalations from concerns about common, typically benign symptoms to searches on rare and frightening disorders. We explore the potential for the Web to induce costly and potentially unnecessary engagements with health professionals. We present findings on the transition of search on common symptoms to the pursuit of in-world healthcare resources such as nearby physicians and healthcare facilities. We build models that predict the transition from searches on initial common symptoms to queries pursuing local medical expertise, using evidence about a user's stream of queries, the content on reviewed pages, and long-term medical search behaviors. Our findings have implications for reducing costly and unnecessary healthcare resource utilization through refinements of ranking algorithms and search interfaces.

[1]  James Hereford,et al.  Patients, physicians, and the Internet. , 2002, Managed care quarterly.

[2]  N. Powe,et al.  The association between women's health information use and health care visits. , 2005, Women's health issues : official publication of the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health.

[3]  T. Wagner,et al.  Does Providing Consumer Health Information Affect Self-Reported Medical Utilization? Evidence From the Healthwise Communities Project , 2001, Medical care.

[4]  L. Baker,et al.  Use of the Internet and e-mail for health care information: results from a national survey. , 2003, JAMA.

[5]  R. J. Cline,et al.  Consumer health information seeking on the Internet: the state of the art. , 2001, Health education research.

[6]  Matthew S. Eastin,et al.  Worried and Wired: Effects of Health Anxiety on Information-Seeking and Health Care Utilization Behaviors , 2006, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[7]  Ryen W. White,et al.  Predicting escalations of medical queries based on web page structure and content , 2010, SIGIR '10.

[8]  Ryen W. White,et al.  Experiences with Web Search on Medical Concerns and Self Diagnosis , 2009, AMIA.

[9]  Andreas Krause,et al.  A Utility-Theoretic Approach to Privacy and Personalization , 2008, AAAI.

[10]  Ryen W. White,et al.  Cyberchondria: Studies of the escalation of medical concerns in Web search , 2009, TOIS.

[11]  Christian Köhler,et al.  How do consumers search for and appraise health information on the world wide web? Qualitative study using focus groups, usability tests, and in-depth interviews , 2002, BMJ : British Medical Journal.