摘要：A steadily increasing number of users search for health information online. Therefore, a multitude of totally different providers with diverging interests offer information. Apart from the information overload the users are flooded with, they may access false, misleading or even life threatening information. In the last 10 years scientists have determined the requirements of an ideal health information system. In the study described in this paper a prototype health information system providing anamnesis related internet-based consumer health information is evaluated. In total, the hypothesis that a computer-aided anamnesis-related internet search provides better results than the use of conventional search engines or health portals is evaluated. For evaluation a randomised controlled study with 140 participants has been conducted in two study sections. In the first section it was found, that for a less complex diagnosis the prototype information system did equally well as the conventional information retrieval. In the second study section it was found, that dealing with complex headache cases participants using the prototype determined significantly better (P=0.031) diagnoses than the control group did without prototype support. It has been shown, that medical expert systems in combination with a meta-search for tailored quality controlled information represents a feasible strategy to provide reliable health information.
关键词：Consumer health informatics, tailoring, headaches, internet, expert system, meta-search
