healthdirect answers millions of COVID-19 questions from the Australian community

During March and April, as COVID-19 escalated in Australia, traffic to healthdirect’s website more than doubled as people searched for easy-to-understand and trusted information about the disease.

Drawing on official sources, including the Department of Health, the Chief Medical Officer, Smart Traveller, and updates from state, territory and Commonwealth announcements, the hub is a central place for people to find information that relates to their situation.

Healthdirect Australia manages the National Coronavirus Helpline which has allowed the team to analyse de-identified call data to identify emerging themes to add to the COVID-19 hub.

"Community anxiety and uncertainty has been high during the pandemic and the demand for information on our website has been unprecedented. We’ve taken our role as the go-to source for the latest, reliable information very seriously,” says Andrew Bryant, Chief Customer Officer, Healthdirect Australia.

Rolling content keeps Australians up to date

As the situation rapidly evolved in February and March, keeping on top of information was a challenge, requiring a rostered team who were constantly monitoring multiple sources for updates. The focus was on information relating to people’s health and the spread of the disease, and included topics on when to isolate, school closures in each state, border closures, changing testing criteria and hygiene messages.

As the pandemic eased in May and the restrictions began to roll back, the rate of change has been equally rapid, and the content and clinical teams have continued the mammoth task of keeping on top of the daily changes across the country, including how many people can gather, what activities are allowed, updates on testing criteria and supporting information for mental health.

All healthdirect health information is developed to be easy-to-understand and actionable, providing useful next steps or links to more specialised information.

The content development team also worked on infographics, videos and blogs to provide information in formats that appeal to different levels of health literacy. The blogs are updated regularly to ensure they maintain current health messaging on boosting your immunity, using the flu vaccination and where to access mental health help.

The COVID-19 hub currently features 12 long-form FAQ pages, with an undertaking of significant effort to make the information easily-navigable. The team continues to explore ways to improve the structure and searchability of the pages by separating the content into separate questions that are classified individually. Behind the scenes, the information management is powered by the Australian Health Thesaurus which surfaces closely related concepts and pages to make relevant content easy to find.

The hub also links directly to healthdirect’s self-guided digital tools, healthdirect Service Finder, COVID-19 Symptom Checker and COVID-19 Restriction Checker.