Visualization for Seeking and Comparing Clinical Trials

The sheer quantity of information available on the Internet poses a challenge to users who need an efficient way of finding the information most relevant to their needs. One of the most frequent information-seeking activities of Internet users is the search for health and medical information. In this research, I focus on the user process of seeking information on clinical trials which are the only evidence-based source of information in the medical domain. Through my work, I show that improvements for seeking clinical-trial information could be made to enhance the effectiveness of seeking and gathering results from clinical trials. Unfortunately, little work has been reported on alternative methods and on visualization systems in particular for these enhancements. I suggest that this omission may be due to a lack of understanding of the particular information needs of users of clinical-trial data. Understanding the users' needs is the first step towards providing more effective interfaces to support them in the information seeking process.;The results of this research indicate that most of the time users are successful in finding the information they require. However, the process of seeking clinical-trial information is tedious, frustrating and time consuming, because current search interfaces do not sufficiently support users seeking this kind of information. Based on the findings from my studies, I propose a set of design principles to design better seeking interfaces. I validate my findings and the set of design principles with two visualization tools that support users in performing information-seeking tasks in the clinical-trial domain. Finally, I provide initial evidence that my proposed designs are indeed helpful with finding, summarizing and comparing information in this complex medical domain.;In this dissertation, I investigate (1) how information is accessed in the medical domain; more specifically, how users seek clinical-trial information on the Internet and (2) how to improve current Web-seeking interfaces for clinical-trial users. I discuss my findings from three exploratory studies: moderated discussion with professional researchers of clinical trials, an online questionnaire with health professionals and patients who search the clinical trial domain, and a qualitative query log analysis of a popular medical search engine.