Best-practice content management on our world-leading health website

With people increasingly seeking health information online, since its re-launch from the healthInsite website in 2013, healthdirect.gov.au (Opens in new tab) has grown to become the most popular Australian health information website and now has over 12,000 pages of tools and content.

While we are pleased with the growth of the healthdirect website we know there is always room to improve how information is surfaced and displayed on the page.

We’ve been working at the leading edge of website information management to achieve the best user experience. Our information management model uses a ‘knowledge graph’.

What is a knowledge graph?

The knowledge graph shows how we organise and connect different pieces of relevant health information for users and how we link data from different sources and display it to the user in a logical way.

Our knowledge graph uses a bespoke health thesaurus – a collection of health terms and concepts – that powers the search function on the healthdirect website.

This sophisticated search function understands both common phrases and keyword searches to deliver results based on the user’s query, which can range in focus from very narrow to quite broad.

For example, the question ‘Do I have diabetes?’ will surface a collection of pages on diabetes and related topics ranging from prevention, to diagnosis, types of tests, living with the disease and information about insulin. It will also present the Symptom Checker (Opens in new tab) tool with diabetes automatically ticked for the user so they can easily check the severity of their symptoms and be guided to the appropriate healthcare action.

By providing related topics in the search results, we aim to reduce the effort required by the user to find relevant information.

Connecting to trusted external websites

The knowledge graph provides a comprehensive way of displaying information from all resources available to healthdirect.

This means that a search for a medicine (Nurofen for instance) will display information from the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) and display whether this medicine is subsidised by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

A user will be able to read what the medicine is used for, how it is taken, possible side effects (including age and pregnancy warnings) and see any available medicine images, provided by GuildLink.

The search results also include related health articles or video content from healthdirect, Information Partners and health services (medical centres or pharmacies) in the area.

We are continuing to grow and develop the knowledge graph using other health-related sources to improve the user experience when looking for and finding information.