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Searching health information on web has become an integral part of today's world, and many people turn to the Web for healthcare information and healthcare assessment. Our pilot study investigates users' preferences for the type of search…
The Web is an important resource for understanding and diagnosing medical conditions. Based on exposure to online content, people may develop undue health concerns, believing that common and benign symptoms are explained by serious…
Asymmetric information in healthcare implies that patients could have difficulty trading off non-health and health related information. I document effects on patient demand when predicted wait time is disclosed to patients in an emergency…
Older adults' need for quality health information has never been more critical as during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, they are susceptible to the wide-spread misinformation disseminated through search engines and social media. To build a…
This article investigates privacy risks to those visiting health- related web pages. The population of pages analyzed is derived from the 50 top search results for 1,986 common diseases. This yielded a total population of 80,124 unique…
People increasingly rely on online sources for health information seeking due to their convenience and timeliness, traditionally using search engines like Google as the primary search agent. Recently, the emergence of generative Artificial…
For many, it can be intimidating or even impossible to seek professional medical help if they have symptoms of an illness. As such, some people approach platforms like Reddit or Quora for a community-based conversation in an attempt to…
Patients are increasingly using large language models (LLMs) to seek answers to their healthcare-related questions. However, benchmarking efforts in LLMs for question answering often focus on medical exam questions, which differ…
Internet users highly rely on and trust web search engines, such as Google, to find relevant information online. However, scholars have documented numerous biases and inaccuracies in search outputs. To improve the quality of search results,…
With the spread of high-speed Internet and portable smart devices, the way people access and consume information has drastically changed. However, this presents many challenges, including information overload, personal data leakage, and…
Searching for medical information is both a common and important activity since it influences decisions people make about their healthcare. Using search engine optimization (SEO), content producers seek to increase the visibility of their…
Search result snippets are crucial in modern search engines, providing users with a quick overview of a website's content. Snippets help users determine the relevance of a document to their information needs, and in certain scenarios even…
Frequent users of emergency departments (ED) pose a significant challenge to hospital emergency services. Despite a wealth of studies in this field, it is hardly understood, what medical conditions lead to frequent attendance. We examine…
People increasingly turn to the Internet when they have a medical condition. The data they create during this process is a valuable source for medical research and for future health services. However, utilizing these data could come at a…
As the ageing population grows, older adults increasingly rely on wearable devices to monitor chronic conditions. However, conventional health data representations (HDRs) often present accessibility challenges, particularly for critical…
The correlation between the demographics of users and the text they write has been investigated through literary texts and, more recently, social media. However, differences pertaining to language use in search engines has not been…
Health information websites offer instantaneous access to information, but have important privacy implications as they can associate a visitor with specific medical conditions. We interviewed 35 residents of Canada to better understand…
Mental health problems among the global population are worsened during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). How individuals engage with online platforms such as Google Search and YouTube undergoes drastic shifts due to pandemic and…
Disparities in access to healthcare have been well-documented in the United States, but their effects on electronic health record (EHR) data reliability and resulting clinical models are poorly understood. Using an All of Us dataset of…
The objective of this study is to understand the online Ask the Doctor services medical advice on internet platforms via AskDoc, a Reddit community that serves as a public AtD platform and study if platforms mirror existing hurdles and…