Query Log Analysis in Biomedicine

Clinicians, researchers and members of the general public are increasingly using information technology to cope with the explosion in biomedical knowledge. This chapter describes the purpose of query log analysis in the biomedical domain as well as features of the biomedical domain such as controlled vocabularies (ontologies) and existing infrastructure useful for query log analysis. We focus specifically on MEDLINE, which is the most comprehensive bibliographic database of the world’s biomedical literature, the PubMed interface to MEDLINE, the Medical Subject Headings vocabulary and the Unified Medical Language System. However, the approaches discussed here can also be applied to other query logs. We conclude with a look toward the future of biomedical query log analysis.