Health information searching is a popular activity conducted on the Internet. However, the focus of past research studies has been on health consumers from the western world. There is a gap in information pertaining to online health information seeking behaviour in the South East Asian region. There are several reasons as to why information seeking behaviour of South East Asian health consumers may be dissimilar to health consumers from the western world. Amongst them are: low health literacy, cultural connotations and reliance on personal knowledge. In this talk, I will provide a snapshot of typical information seeking activities performed by online South East Asian health consumers. Why do South East Asian health consumers go online to perform a health search? What sources are used? What search challenges do they face? What trustworthiness evaluation methods are used? And how is information consumed?

Biography 

Anushia Inthiran is a senior lecturer at the Department of Accounting and Information Systems at the University of Canterbury. Her research interest is in the field of information science and human computer information retrieval. Anushia was track chair for the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) in 2017 and 2020. She is also an associate editor for the International Conference in Information Systems (ICIS) and an editorial board member for the Journal of Global Information Technology Management. Anushia was awarded the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme by the Malaysian government as Primary Investigator in 2013. In 2016, she was awarded the Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning by the Faculty of Information Technology Monash University. In 2019, she delivered a keynote address at the Science Coding Conference in Christchurch. In 2020, she was a nominee for the University of Canterbury business school teaching excellence award.