%0 Journal Article
%@ 1438-8871
%I Gunther Eysenbach
%V 6
%N 3
%P e27
%T Reformulation of Consumer Health Queries with Professional Terminology: A Pilot Study
%A Plovnick,Robert M
%A Zeng,Qing T
%+ Brigham and Women's Hospital, Decision Systems Group, Thorn 310, 75 Francis Street, Boston MA 02115, USA, +1 617 732 4950, plovnick@dsg.harvard.edu
%K Information retrieval
%K consumer informatics
%K Internet
%D 2004
%7 3.9.2004
%9 Original Paper
%J J Med Internet Res
%G English
%X Background:  The Internet is becoming an increasingly important resource for health-information seekers. However, consumers often do not use effective search strategies. Query reformulation is one potential intervention to improve the effectiveness of consumer searches. Objective: We endeavored to answer the research question: "Does reformulating original consumer queries with preferred terminology from the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus lead to better search returns?" Methods:  Consumer-generated queries with known goals (n=16) that could be mapped to UMLS Metathesaurus terminology were used as test samples. Reformulated queries were generated by replacing user terms with Metathesaurus-preferred synonyms (n=18). Searches (n=36) were performed using both a consumer information site and a general search engine. Top 30 precision was used as a performance indicator to compare the performance of the original and reformulated queries. Results:  Forty-two percent of the searches utilizing reformulated queries yielded better search returns than their associated original queries, 19% yielded worse results, and the results for the remaining 39% did not change. We identified ambiguous lay terms, expansion of acronyms, and arcane professional terms as causes for changes in performance. Conclusions:  We noted a trend towards increased precision when providing substitutions for lay terms, abbreviations, and acronyms. We have found qualitative evidence that reformulating queries with professional terminology may be a promising strategy to improve consumer health-information searches, although we caution that automated reformulation could in fact worsen search performance when the terminology is ill-fitted or arcane. 
%M 15471753
%R 10.2196/jmir.6.3.e27
%U http://www.jmir.org/2004/3/e27/
%U https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.6.3.e27
%U http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15471753