Metadata extraction routines for improving infobutton performance

Infobuttons have been proven as an effective means for providing quick, context-specific links to pertinent information resources at the point of care. Current infobutton manager implementations, however, lack the ability to exchange metadata, are limited to a relatively small set of information providers, and are targeted primarily for a clinician audience. As part of a local effort to implement infobuttons for patient use via a tethered personal health record, we present a series of metadata extraction routines. These routines were constructed to extract key pieces of information from health information providers on the Internet, including content coverage, language availability, and readability scores. The extraction routines were tested using thirty different disease conditions against eight different providers. The routines yielded 183 potential infobutton targets and associated metadata for each. The capabilities of the extraction routines will be expanded to cover new types of metadata in the future.