What makes an “informed patient”? The impact of contextualization on the search for health information on the Internet.

The Internet is nowadays a powerful medium and can help patients to become better-informed citizens. Increasingly, citizens are searching for health information on the Internet. The Internet-based resource often acts as a virtual healthcare professional. The effectiveness of the communication between the patient and the virtual healthcare professional depends partly upon the presence of contextual information. The issue here is to what extent the contextualization of information is needed for effective information seeking and for the person's understanding of the retrieved/received information. The impact of contextualization on information search also closely relates to the person's cognitive resources. Using a theoretical communication framework (Te'eni 2001), we explore contextualization in a health website, and discuss the above issues and the possible relevance of contextualized information on the informed patient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]