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Evidence-based Knowledge Synthesis and Hypothesis Validation: Navigating Biomedical Knowledge Bases via Explainable AI and Agentic Systems
Published on: June 13, 2025
Use experience evaluation of Google search for obtaining medical knowledge: a case study
Liupu Wang1, Juexin Wang, Michael Wang
1College of Computer Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun, China. sevenocean@163.com
International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics
|February 3, 2012
Summary
Google searches for breast cancer information are helpful for users, but valuable resources may be hard to find. Improving search sensitivity is needed for better medical information discovery.
Area of Science:
- Health Informatics
- Medical Search Engine Evaluation
Background:
- Increasing use of internet search engines like Google for health information.
- Need to evaluate the effectiveness of search engines for medical queries.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess Google's effectiveness in retrieving breast cancer medical information.
- To evaluate the user experience of navigating search results for health topics.
Main Methods:
- Conducted hallway testing with six volunteers.
- Searched 'Breast Cancer' on Google and evaluated the top 500 websites.
- Volunteers scored their experience for each website.
Main Results:
- Google search results for breast cancer are generally helpful for lay users within the first 50 hits.
- Highly valuable medical information websites were often found beyond the top 200 search results.
- Search specificity was satisfactory, but sensitivity requires improvement.
Conclusions:
- Google provides satisfactory specificity for medical information searches.
- Significant improvements are needed in search sensitivity to ensure users find all relevant health information.
- User experience in accessing critical medical data via search engines can be enhanced.
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