Discovery Early Career Researcher Award 2018 (DE180101579)

Searching when the stakes are high - better health decisions from Dr Google

This project aims to help people make better health decisions from search engines. 80% of Australians use Dr Google despite evidence showing that many often find incorrect and unreliable health information, which can increase the severity of their health condition, ultimately increasing cost of healthcare delivery. This project expects to provide new understanding about why and how people fail to find useful health information. Expected outcomes of this project are new models and methods for evaluating high-stakes search and new search technologies to help people find and recognise high quality information to make better health decisions. This should provide significant benefits to Australian health consumers and the healthcare system.

Impact: This project will directly benefit the increasingly large number of people who turn to search engines like Google for guidance about health decisions. Improving the information that search queries return will improve health decisions and health outcomes for individuals. There are many potential economic benefits from access to high quality health information online, for example the reduction of healthcare costs from poor decision making.

Chief Investigator(s): Guido Zuccon (UQ)

Administering Organisation: UQ

Value: $346,446.00 (AUD)

Founding round: 2018 (2018-2021)