How doctors apply semantic components to specify search in work-related information retrieval

Workplace searching is often context-specific and targets a “right answer” within some domain-specific aspect of the search topic. We have developed the semantic component (SC) model that allows searchers to specify a search within context-specific aspects of the main topic of documents. The goal of our study was to gain insight into how family practice physicians at sundhed.dk, a national healthcare portal in Denmark, applied the SC model to formulate queries to solve work-related search tasks. The results showed that doctors used the model purposively when choosing search facets and search concepts. They were relatively consistent in their use. The findings provide promising evidence of the model’s potential usefulness.