Aided search strategy enabled by decision support

Current Web-based search engines presume a category search for a specific group of users. This approach is appropriate for generalized information searches since it is based on statistically generated user profiles. However, in some applications, such as medicine and law, an individualized search for a specific user at a given point in time is desired. In addition, the use of specialized terminology in some fields necessitates guidance for the non-expert to be successful in locating the desired information. This paper presents a new decision support system enabled by the analytic hierarchy process and intelligent software agents that can be used by researchers and practitioners in technical fields to aid information retrieval and improve search results from a controlled vocabulary. An application from telemedicine is given to illustrate the potential improvements.