Towards Identifying Peer Expertise in Online Health Forums

Abstract

Online health forums have become increasingly popular over the past several years. Patients are able to seek answers to queries regarding their health or solicit opinions about a particular treatment through such community forums. Such forums also provide users with a platform to network with peers and share information, experiential advice, and support. Although some forums include doctors as members, there exists another set of lay users who we call peer experts, who have gained expertise on the particular health topic through experience, and have garnered credibility in responding to queries in a particular area of medicine over time. These users are highly knowledgeable about a particular disease and are able to provide valuable information to other users. This paper aims to motivate the need to identify peer experts in health forums and study their characteristics.