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@article{206328,
        author = {Divyanshi Dubey},
        title = {The Health Literacy Penalty: Clinical vs. Lay Terminology and Medical Information Quality Across Ten Diseases},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {2},
        pages = {1612-1617},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=206328},
        abstract = {This study examined whether Google search results differ when the same medical symptom is described using clinical terminology versus everyday language. Using a paired-query design across ten diseases, we found that lay-terminology searches returned significantly lower-quality medical information, with the largest gap observed for depression a finding with direct public health implications. Millions of people search for health information online using everyday language to describe their symptoms, yet the quality of results they receive compared to searches using clinical terminology has never been systematically examined across multiple disease categories. We hypothesized that Google searches using clinical terminology would return higher-quality medical information than searches using lay terminology, and that this quality gap would vary by disease category. We constructed paired clinical and lay queries for ten diseases spanning seven clinical domains and retrieved the top ten organic Google search results for each query, yielding 200 total results. Each result was scored on source quality tier, evidence-based language density, and alarming language density. Independent samples t-tests confirmed that clinical queries returned significantly higher-quality sources and significantly more evidence-based content than lay queries (p < 0.05 for both). The largest gap was observed for depression, where lay searchers received results with almost no evidence-based language. These findings suggest that the language patients use when searching online systematically determines the quality of health information they receive.},
        keywords = {consumer health informatics, health equity, health literacy, medical terminology, search engine quality},
        month = {July},
        }