Do medical professionals tag images differently from non-medical professionals? An implication of retrieving user-generated images of everyday medical situations

Mobile photography not only allows people to take and share photos of everyday life, but also demonstrates the capability of emergency and crisis reporting at a critical moment. These images of everyday medical situations help the public understand the first-hand situation of those dramatic events, and facilitate the medical professionals to allocate medical resources and effectively diagnose. However, as the world is becoming more globalized and the communication between physician and patients is becoming more difficult as the healthcare practice becomes more complex, to be able to more effectively retrieval these user-generated images scattered throughout the Internet is of great importance. Social tagging is one such approach of managing and discovering photos for specific use. In response to the research gap and practical challenges, this study employs between-subject quasi-experiment method to investigate the tagging behavior of users of images of everyday medical situations. It aims to identify the differences of image tagging behaviors between two socially distinct groups, medical professionals and non-medical professionals. Results of the study may contribute to the increase of awareness and understanding of social media in healthcare, and the development of tag-based medical image retrieval service that is socio-cultural sensitive.