Improving service of online health information provision: A case of usage-driven design for health information portals

Health information portals (HIPs) are now well-established channels for providing reliable and relevant health information as a service to health information consumers. The concept of a smart health information portal was proposed to improve the search experience of HIP users, advancing HIPs learning capability by looking at usage data. This paper describes a design-science research project which utilized insights from usage data to address search issues. A conceptual approach and an architecture to enable usage-driven capability are described. We propose two specific applications, a HIP-specific content issue reporting tool and a topic search feature, to demonstrate how usage data can enhance HIP operations and users’ search experience. Based on the demonstrated implementations and empirical analysis, this paper also discusses how usage-driven design can lead to improved service in online health information provision.