Leveraging Library and Information Science to Discover Consumer Health Informatics Research

The field of consumer health informatics (CHI) is constantly evolving. The literature that supports CHI includes a broad scope of expertise and disciplines, which makes discovering relevant literature a challenge. Through a library and information science lens, we provide foundational familiarity with the structures of information discovery systems and considerations that impact the discovery of CHI literature. We outline the steps included in the design and execution phases of a CHI-related literature search. We also provide an example search using wearable technologies and a case in point that illustrates how terminologies differ across databases. We describe the importance of operationalizing elements of a research question and strategically combining search terms in a query to enhance the find- ability of CHI literature. The reader will gain a database-agnostic understanding of the structures and factors relevant to the retrieval of CHI literature, which should be particularly useful as the field of CHI and the tools for retrieving literature continu- ously change.