Consumer health informatics: knowledge engineering and evaluation studies of medical HouseCall

The changes in reimbursement structure in health care have given rise to a rapidly growing focus on the consumer and this recent increase has been fueled by the advent of the Web. Consumer health information (CHI) systems empower the consumer and aim to improve doctor-patient communication. We present HouseCall, a CHI system. First, this paper reviews how a consumer information system can be derived from an existing physician knowledge base (Iliad). Second, it presents evaluation studies that: 1) show how consumers are eager for non 'dumbed-down' content with easy access, 2) demonstrate the large spectrum of topics of interest and the 'natural' search strategies of health care consumers.