title: Tracking changes in search behaviour at a health web site.
abstract: Nowadays, the internet is used as a means to provide the public with official information on many different topics, including health related matters and care providers. In this work we have studied a search log from the official Swedish health web site 1177.se for patterns of search behaviour over time. To improve the analysis, we mapped the queries to UMLS semantic types and MeSH categories. Our analysis shows that, as expected, diseases and health care activities are the ones of most interest, but also a clear increased interest in geographical locations in the setting of health care providers. We also note a change over time in which kinds of diseases are of interest. Finally, we conclude that this type of analysis may be useful in studies of what health related topics matter to the public, but also for design and follow-up of public information campaigns.
authors.affiliation: University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden. Ann-Marie.Eklund@svenska.gu.se
authors.forename: Ann-Marie
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Eklund
mesh_terms: D015438:Health Behavior; D063005:Health Information Systems / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D020407:Internet / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D057386:Search Engine / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013548:Sweden