Sifting Through Clutter and Finding Answers that Utter Among COVID-19 Data for Medical Users via Gateways

Science gateways have been a crucial tool that lowers the barriers of computer language proficiency for researchers and scientists alike to implement digital tools to further their research agendas. However, gateways remain somewhat esoteric and difficult to use for many potential users. A chatbot has been proposed as a solution to aid gateway users and for the improvement of gateway usability. Via in-depth interviews with 10 medical professionals, we investigated the challenges they faced when extracting data, namely, slow speed, limited scope, and mixed quality of data. We suggest future gateway developments to address the issues that medical professionals face when searching for publications and data. Findings suggest that gateways could serve practitioners (i.e., clinicians, healthcare providers in this case), beyond the original vision for research and education. Moreover, gateway projects could consider conducting similar market research interviews to better understand the work context (including challenges) faced by the intended users of specific gateways.