Health search engine with e-document analysis for reliable search results.
OBJECTIVE
After a review of the existing practical solution available to the citizen to retrieve eHealth document, the paper describes an original specialized search engine WRAPIN.


METHODS
WRAPIN uses advanced cross lingual information retrieval technologies to check information quality by synthesizing medical concepts, conclusions and references contained in the health literature, to identify accurate, relevant sources. Thanks to MeSH terminology [1] (Medical Subject Headings from the U.S. National Library of Medicine) and advanced approaches such as conclusion extraction from structured document, reformulation of the query, WRAPIN offers to the user a privileged access to navigate through multilingual documents without language or medical prerequisites.


RESULTS
The results of an evaluation conducted on the WRAPIN prototype show that results of the WRAPIN search engine are perceived as informative 65% (59% for a general-purpose search engine), reliable and trustworthy 72% (41% for the other engine) by users. But it leaves room for improvement such as the increase of database coverage, the explanation of the original functionalities and an audience adaptability.


CONCLUSIONS
Thanks to evaluation outcomes, WRAPIN is now in exploitation on the HON web site (http://www.healthonnet.org), free of charge. Intended to the citizen it is a good alternative to general-purpose search engines when the user looks up trustworthy health and medical information or wants to check automatically a doubtful content of a Web page.
Gaudinat
Arnaud
A
Health on the Net Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland. arnaud.gaudinat@healthonnet.org
Ruch
Patrick
P
Joubert
Michel
M
Uziel
Philippe
P
Strauss
Anne
A
Thonnet
Michèle
M
Baud
Robert
R
Spahni
Stéphane
S
Weber
Patrick
P
Bonal
Juan
J
Boyer
Celia
C
Fieschi
Marius
M
Geissbuhler
Antoine
A
D005060:Europe; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D020407:Internet; D008490:Medical Informatics; D011786:Quality Control; D012984:Software