bims-librar Biomed News
on Biomedical librarianship
Issue of 2019‒10‒06
fourteen papers selected by
Thomas Krichel
Open Library Society
  1. Examining the Interaction Between Medical Information Seeking Online and Understanding: Exploratory Study.
  2. Impact of the Internet on Patient-Physician Communication.
  3. How Dr Google Is Impacting Parental Medical Decision Making.
  4. Cooperative Extension Gets Moving, but How? Exploration of Extension Health Educators' Sources and Channels for Information-Seeking Practices.
  5. State-of-the-art methods in healthcare text classification system: AI paradigm.
  6. Assessment of Reliability of YouTube Videos on Orthodontics.
  7. Semantic Network Analysis Reveals Opposing Online Representations of the Search Term "GMO".
  8. Medical Misinformation on Social Media: Cognitive Bias, Pseudo-Peer Review, and the Good Intentions Hypothesis.
  9. Special Feature: Countering Vaccine Misinformation.
  10. Exploring the use and quality of Internet discussion forums in pregnancy: A qualitative analysis.
  11. Palliative care knowledge, information sources, and beliefs: Results of a national survey of adults in the USA.
  12. Information and Communication Systems to Tackle Barriers to Breastfeeding: Systematic Search and Review.
  13. "Am I doing this wrong?" Breastfeeding mothers' use of an online forum.
  14. Recognizing software names in biomedical literature using machine learning.
  1. JMIR Cancer. 2019 Sep 24. 5(2): e13240
    Examining the Interaction Between Medical Information Seeking Online and Understanding: Exploratory Study.
    Rei Kobayashi, Masato Ishizaki.
      BACKGROUND: Online information seeking on medical topics by patients can have beneficial effects by helping them decide on treatment options and fostering better relationships with doctors. The quality of websites and processes of seeking information online have mostly been studied, with a focus on the accuracy and reliability of websites; however, few studies have examined the relationship between other aspects of quality and the processes of seeking medical information online.OBJECTIVE: This exploratory study aimed to shed light on the quality of websites used for information seeking from the perspective of understanding medical information in combination with seeking it online.
    METHODS: The study participants were 15 Japanese university students with no problem using the internet. A questionnaire survey about health literacy (47 items on a 4-point Likert scale) and information navigation skills on the internet (8 items on a 5-point Likert scale) was conducted before participants engaged in online information seeking and qualitative interviews. The students searched for information on a disease and its treatment. The websites viewed were gathered from search behavior recorded by software and browser logs. Follow-up interviews were conducted to elicit explanations from the participants about the assignments and their views of online information seeking. The explanations were evaluated by 55 health care professionals on a 3-point Likert scale and then assessed based on their comments and the participant interviews.
    RESULTS: The mean age of the participants was 20.6 years (median 21; SD 1.06). All participants were able to access reliable websites with information relevant to the assignments. The mean ratings of the students' explanations were 108.6 (median 109; range=83-134) for the disease and 105.6 (median 104; range=87-117) for its treatment. The inter-rater reliability were 0.84 (95% CI 0.77-0.90) and 0.95 (95% CI 0.93-0.97), indicating good and excellent, respectively. The mean of the sum of the health literacy skills was 115.1 (median 115; range=80-166) and the mean for information navigation skills was 25.9 (median 26; range=17-36), respectively. Health literacy and information navigation skills were moderately correlated (r=0.54; 95% CI 0.033-0.822; P=.04). Among the four stages of health literacy, understanding and appraising (r=0.53; 95% CI 0.025-0.820; P=.04) were moderately correlated with information navigation skills (r=0.52; 95% CI 0.013-0.816; P=.046). The participants had no difficulties operating and browsing the internet and considered medical and public institution websites to be reliable; however, due to unfamiliarity with medical terms, they had difficulties choosing a site from the results obtained and comparing and synthesizing information provided by different sites. They also looked for sites providing orderly information in plain language but provided explanations from sites that gave inadequate interpretations of information.
    CONCLUSIONS: This study revealed interactions between searching the internet for, and understanding, medical information by analyzing the processes of information seeking online, physicians' evaluations and comments about the participants' explanations, and the participants' perceptions.
    Keywords:  consumer health informatics; health communication; health literacy; information-seeking behavior; internet access
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2196/13240
  2. Eur Urol Focus. 2019 Sep 30. pii: S2405-4569(19)30288-3. [Epub ahead of print]
    Impact of the Internet on Patient-Physician Communication.
    Aisha T Langford, Timothy Roberts, Jaytin Gupta, Kerli T Orellana, Stacy Loeb.
      Data from the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) show that the Internet is the first place people go to when they need information about health or medical topics. Searches for online health information have both benefits and challenges for patient-physician communication. To fully appreciate these issues, it is important to understand the following: (1) who is going online; (2) why are they going; (3) where are they going; (4) what needs are being met; and (5) how, if at all, do they discuss health information found online with their doctors. The objective of this mini-review is to highlight contemporary issues regarding the impact of the internet on patient-physician communication and to present directions for future research. PATIENT SUMMARY: The growing use of the Internet has implications for people seeking information on health matters. Our review shows that the Internet can be helpful for patient-physician communication, but this depends on the quality of health information found and whether the information is discussed during medical visits.
    Keywords:  Communication; Health communication; Information-seeking behavior; Internet; Patients; Physicians; Prostatic neoplasms; Urology
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euf.2019.09.012
  3. Immunol Allergy Clin North Am. 2019 Nov;pii: S0889-8561(19)30050-5. [Epub ahead of print]39(4): 583-591
    How Dr Google Is Impacting Parental Medical Decision Making.
    David R Stukus.
      The Internet has forever changed the manner in which we communicate with one another and gather information. Patients and the general public are using online search engines to look for information pertaining to their own health as well as the health of friends and relatives. Unfortunately, the information they encounter is often incorrect and potentially harmful. Many of the sites offering misinformation directly profit by selling nonvalidated tests or treatment options. More than ever, it is important for medical professionals to be aware of the misinformation their patients are encountering online and develop conversations to address this during individual encounters.
    Keywords:  Evidence-based information; Internet; Self-management; Social media
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iac.2019.07.011
  4. Am J Health Promot. 2019 Oct 03. 890117119879606
    Cooperative Extension Gets Moving, but How? Exploration of Extension Health Educators' Sources and Channels for Information-Seeking Practices.
    Thomas E Strayer, Lauren E Kennedy, Laura E Balis, NithyaPriya S Ramalingam, Meghan L Wilson, Samantha M Harden.
      PURPOSE: The Cooperative Extension System (Extension) has implemented concerted efforts toward health promotion in communities across the nation by acting as an intermediary between communities and universities. Little is known about how these intermediaries communicate and learn about existing evidence-based programming. This study serves to explore this gap by learning about information sources and channels used within Extension.DESIGN: Sequential explanatory mixed methods approach.
    SETTING: National Cooperative Extension System.
    PARTICIPANTS: Extension community-based health educators.
    METHODS: A nationally distributed survey with follow-up semistructured interviews. Survey results were analyzed using a Kruskal-Wallis 1-way analysis of variance test paired with Bonferroni post hoc. Transcripts were analyzed by conventional content analysis.
    RESULTS: One hundred twenty-one Extension educators from 33 states responded to the survey, and 18 of 20 invited participants completed the interviews. Educators' information seeking existed in 2 forms: (1) information sources for learning about programming and (2) channels by which this information is communicated. Extension educators reported contacting health specialists and other educators. Extension educators also reported using technological means of communication such as e-mail and Internet to reach information sources such as peers, specialists, academic journals, and so on.
    CONCLUSION: Extension state specialists were preferred as primary sources for intervention information, and technology was acknowledged as an easy contact channel. This study identifies county-based health educators' information structures and justifies the need for future research on the role of specialists in communication efforts for educators.
    Keywords:  cooperative extension; knowledge transfer; mixed methods; public health; science-to-service gap
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/0890117119879606
  5. Front Biosci (Landmark Ed). 2020 Jan 01. 25 646-672
    State-of-the-art methods in healthcare text classification system: AI paradigm.
    Saurabh Kumar Srivastava, Sandeep Kumar Singh, Jasjit S Suri.
      Machine learning has shown its importance in delivering healthcare solutions and revolutionizing the future of filtering huge amountd of textual content. The machine intelligence can adapt semantic relations among text to infer finer contextual information and language processing system can use this information for better decision support and quality of life care. Further, a learnt model can efficiently utilize written healthcare information in knowledgeable patterns. The word-document and document-document linkage can help in gaining better contextual information. We analyzed 124 research articles in text and healthcare domain related to the ML paradigm and showed the mechanism of intelligence to capture hidden insights from document representation where only a term or word is used to explain the phenomenon. Mostly in the research, document-word relations are identified while relations with other documents are ignored. This paper emphasizes text representations and its linage with ML, DL, and RL approaches, which is an important marker for intelligence segregation. Furthermore, we highlighted the advantages of ML and DL methods as powerful tools for automatic text classification tasks.
  6. Turk J Orthod. 2019 Sep;32(3): 145-150
    Assessment of Reliability of YouTube Videos on Orthodontics.
    Delal Dara Kılınç, Gülşilay Sayar.
      Objective: In addition to being an entertainment channel, YouTube is also one of the most popular visual information sources today. People search YouTube to consult also on orthodontics, as well as on many other topics. The objective of the present study was to analyze the quality and reliability of information of the videos on YouTube about orthodontics.Methods: YouTube was searched systematically by two researchers on orthodontics by using the keywords "Orthodontics," "Orthodontist," and "Orthodontic Treatment." Videos on the first three pages (60 videos) for each keyword were assessed. Researchers evaluated the reliability of the videos by using the Reliability Score (adapted from DISCERN) and the quality of the videos by using the Global Quality Score (GQS).
    Results: The mean GQS results were 2.6±1.3 for videos in the "Orthodontist" group, 3.2±1.3 for videos in the "Orthodontics" group, and 2.3±1.2 for videos in the "Orthodontic Treatment" group on a 5-point scale. The Reliability Score results were 2, 2, and 1.5 for videos in the "Orthodontist," "Orthodontics," and "Orthodontic Treatment" groups, respectively, on a 5-point scale. The Intraclass Correlation Coefficient results presented a positive relationship between the researchers.
    Conclusion: Owing to the lack of peer-review process and pre-upload scientific evaluation process, videos on YouTube can lead the public to misinformation.
    Keywords:  YouTube; internet; orthodontic treatment; orthodontics; orthodontist
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.5152/TurkJOrthod.2019.18064
  7. Glob Chall. 2018 Jan 22. 2(1): 1700082
    Semantic Network Analysis Reveals Opposing Online Representations of the Search Term "GMO".
    Ke Jiang, Brittany N Anderton, Pamela C Ronald, George A Barnett.
      Making sound food and agriculture decisions is important for global society and the environment. Experts tend to view crop genetic engineering, a technology that can improve yields and minimize impacts on the environment, more favorably than the public. Because there is a causal relationship between public opinion and public policy, it is important to understand how opinions about genetically engineered (GE) crops are influenced. The public increasingly seeks science information on the Internet. Here, semantic network analysis is performed to characterize the presentation of the term "GMO (genetically modified organism)," a proxy for food developed from GE crops, on the web. Texts from three sources are analyzed: U.S. federal websites, top pages from a Google search, and online news titles. We found that the framing and sentiment (positive, neutral, or negative attitudes) of "GMO" varies across these sources. It is described how differences in the portrayal of GE food by each source might affect public opinion. A current understanding of the types of information individuals may encounter online can provide insight into public opinion toward GE food. In turn, this knowledge can guide teaching and communication efforts by the scientific community to promote informed decision-making about agricultural biotechnologies.
    Keywords:  GMO; concept co‐occurrence; genetically engineered foods; online information; semantic network analysis
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1002/gch2.201700082
  8. Circulation. 2019 Oct;140(14): 1131-1133
    Medical Misinformation on Social Media: Cognitive Bias, Pseudo-Peer Review, and the Good Intentions Hypothesis.
    Samuel P Trethewey.
      
    Keywords:  bias; communication; health literacy; peer review; public health; publication bias; social media
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.119.041719
  9. Am J Nurs. 2019 Oct;119(10): 50-55
    Special Feature: Countering Vaccine Misinformation.
    Lindsey Danielson, Blima Marcus, Lori Boyle.
      Evidence consistently shows that vaccines are safe, effective, and cost-efficient. Yet preventable outbreaks of infectious diseases are occurring in the United States, leading to a strong public response and intense scrutiny of the antivaccine movement and its persistent spread of misinformation. Social media has been a major platform for such misinformation, and recent examinations have found that nurses are not exempt from engaging in antivaccine discourse.By practicing evidence-based care, addressing health literacy, and becoming involved in public health policy, nurses can be excellent advocates for immunization and may help prevent additional outbreaks of preventable diseases.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NAJ.0000586176.77841.86
  10. Birth. 2019 Oct 04.
    Exploring the use and quality of Internet discussion forums in pregnancy: A qualitative analysis.
    Leila Ellis, Lesley Roberts.
      BACKGROUND: The Internet is widely used as a source of health information to assist decision making in pregnancy. Concerningly, the quality of information shared on online pregnancy forums is unclear. Our objectives were to explore online pregnancy forum health-related use and evaluate quality of information shared.METHODS: This retrospective qualitative study had two phases of data collection and analysis. First, thematic analysis of a representative sample (n = 480) of posts explored motivators for forum use. Second, a subgroup (n = 153) of threads with clinical content was assessed for congruence with reputable sources.
    RESULTS: Common motivators for forum engagement were a desire for lived experience, unlimited access, and the opportunity to express emotions. Of 1098 responses sharing advice, information, or experience, 601 (54.7%) were accurate; 230 (20.9%) were erroneous, incomplete, or misleading; and 267 (24.3%) lacked credible evidence. Of these, 60 (5.5%) were potentially harmful. Responses often directed women to a health care practitioner, but concerningly, failed to refer ten women in need of urgent medical assessment. Few discussions were self-regulating, with only 12 of 230 (5.2%) poor-quality messages subsequently rectified.
    CONCLUSIONS: Exchange of information and emotional support among peers are key functions of online pregnancy forums. There is a modest prevalence of poor-quality or potentially harmful information but more concerningly a lack of peer moderation. We suggest health care practitioners ensure pregnant women have a clear understanding of when clinical consultation is required. Clinicians may wish to discuss the supportive community aspects of online forums in cases where offline support is lacking.
    Keywords:  online forums; pregnancy; qualitative research
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/birt.12459
  11. Palliat Support Care. 2019 Oct 01. 1-8
    Palliative care knowledge, information sources, and beliefs: Results of a national survey of adults in the USA.
    Eric Adjei Boakye, Kahee A Mohammed, Nosayaba Osazuwa-Peters, Min Jee Lee, Lauren Slomer, Damilola Emuze, Wiley D Jenkins.
      OBJECTIVE: Despite its established benefits, palliative care (PC) is not well known among patients and family/caregivers. From a nationally representative survey, we sought to assess the following associated with PC: knowledge, knowledge sources, and beliefs.METHODS: Data were drawn from the Health Information National Trends Study (HINTS 5 Cycle 2), a cross-sectional, survey of non-institutionalized adults aged 18+ years in the USA. Data were weighted and assessed by proportional comparison and multivariable logistic regression.
    RESULTS: A total of 3504 respondents were identified, and approximately 29% knew about PC. In the adjusted model, less PC knowledge was associated with: lower age (those aged <50), male gender, lower education (<high school graduation or high school graduate), and non-internet users. A little over half (55%) of respondents accessed healthcare providers first for PC information, and 80% considered providers the most trusted source of PC information. Most of the participants strongly/somewhat agreed that the goal of PC is to help friends and family cope with a patient's illness (90.6%), offer social and emotional support (93.4%), and manage pain and other physical symptoms (95.1%). Similarly, a majority (83.3%) strongly/somewhat agreed that it is a doctor's obligation to inform all patients with cancer about the option of PC.
    SIGNIFICANCE OF RESULTS: PC knowledge was generally low (1-in-3 respondents knew of PC), with significant differences according to age, gender, education, and internet use. These data provide a baseline from which PC education policies and interventions may be measured.
    Keywords:  Beliefs about palliative care; HINTS; Palliative care knowledge; Sources of palliative care information seeking; Trusted source of information for palliative care
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1017/S1478951519000786
  12. J Med Internet Res. 2019 Sep 27. 21(9): e13947
    Information and Communication Systems to Tackle Barriers to Breastfeeding: Systematic Search and Review.
    Kymeng Tang, Kathrin Gerling, Wei Chen, Luc Geurts.
      BACKGROUND: Breastfeeding has many benefits for newborns, mothers, and the wider society. The World Health Organization recommends mothers to feed newborns exclusively with breastmilk for the first 6 months after birth, but breastfeeding rates in many countries fail to align with the recommendations because of various barriers. Breastfeeding success is associated with a number of determinants, such as self-efficacy, intention to breastfeed, and attitudes toward breastfeeding. Information and communication technology (ICT) has been leveraged to support breastfeeding by means of improving knowledge or providing practical supports in different maternal stages. Previous reviews have examined and summarized the effectiveness and credibility of interventions; however, no review has been done from a human-computer interaction perspective that is concerned with novel interaction techniques and the perspective of end users.OBJECTIVE: The objective of this review was to provide a comprehensive overview of existing digital interventions that support breastfeeding by investigating systems' objective, technology design, validation process, and quality attributes, both in terms of clinical parameters as well as usability and user experience.
    METHODS: A systematic search was conducted in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines in the following libraries: PubMed, Science Direct, Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library (ACM Digital Library), and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Xplore (IEEE Xplore).
    RESULTS: A total of 35 papers discussing 30 interventions were included. The main goals of these interventions were organized into 4 categories: breastfeeding education (n=12), breastfeeding promotion (n=8), communication support (n=6), and daily practical support (n=4). Of the interventions, 13 target mothers in the postnatal period. Most interventions come in forms of client communication systems (n=18), which frequently leverage Web technologies, text message, and mobile apps to provide breastfeeding support. Systems predominantly focus on mothers; validation strategies were rather heterogeneous, with 12 user studies concerning usability and user experience and 18 clinical validation studies focusing on the effects of the interventions on breastfeeding determinants; 5 papers did not report results. Generally, straightforward systems (eg, communication tools or Web-based solutions) seem to be more effective than complex interventions (eg, games).
    CONCLUSIONS: Existing information and communication systems offer effective means of improving breastfeeding outcomes, but they do not address all relevant periods in parenthood (eg, the antenatal period) and often do not involve important stakeholders, such as partners. There is an opportunity to leverage more complex technical systems to open up avenues for the broader design of ICT to support breastfeeding; however, considering evaluation outcomes of existing support systems of higher complexity, such systems need to be designed with care.
    Keywords:  breastfeeding; review; technology
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2196/13947
  13. Matern Child Nutr. 2019 Sep 30. e12890
    "Am I doing this wrong?" Breastfeeding mothers' use of an online forum.
    Cynthia N Lebron, Sara M St George, Daphne G Eckembrecher, Lucia M Alvarez.
      As mothers seek out information around breastfeeding, many are turning to online message boards, listservs, or social media for advice. Babycenter.com, a parenting website with widespread use, hosts a Breastfeeding Support and Help community forum with over 140,000 users and more than one million conversation threads. The purpose of this study is to examine this online support forum to understand the information seeking and sharing practices of its users. We extracted a total of 258 original posts and 1,445 corresponding comments from Babycenter.com's breastfeeding forum posted over a 10-day period. Using content analysis, we coded the posts into 15 categories reflective of the types of information users were seeking. We then randomly selected 45 conversation threads across the most popular categories to further understand how users were sharing information. The most popular breastfeeding topics for which users sought out information included feeding challenges, supply issues, feeding schedule and duration, pumping, physical health, excretion issues, storing milk, nipple issues, and general breastfeeding questions. Participants elicited information from others using interviewing questions and built consensus around issues by agreeing with previous posts. They shared their knowledge and personal breastfeeding experiences and also provided encouragement to continue breastfeeding and overcome challenges. Online support forums are actively being used by breastfeeding mothers seeking information from others with similar experiences. This presents an important resource for breastfeeding mothers and may, therefore, be an important component of future breastfeeding interventions.
    Keywords:  breastfeeding confidence; breastfeeding duration; breastfeeding knowledge; breastfeeding promotion; breastfeeding support; qualitative methods
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/mcn.12890
  14. Health Informatics J. 2019 Sep 30. 1460458219869490
    Recognizing software names in biomedical literature using machine learning.
    Qiang Wei, Yaoyun Zhang, Muhammad Amith, Rebecca Lin, Jenay Lapeyrolerie, Cui Tao, Hua Xu.
      Software tools now are essential to research and applications in the biomedical domain. However, existing software repositories are mainly built using manual curation, which is time-consuming and unscalable. This study took the initiative to manually annotate software names in 1,120 MEDLINE abstracts and titles and used this corpus to develop and evaluate machine learning-based named entity recognition systems for biomedical software. Specifically, two strategies were proposed for feature engineering: (1) domain knowledge features and (2) unsupervised word representation features of clustered and binarized word embeddings. Our best system achieved an F-measure of 91.79% for recognizing software from titles and an F-measure of 86.35% for recognizing software from both titles and abstracts using inexact matching criteria. We then created a biomedical software catalog with 19,557 entries using the developed system. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using natural language processing methods to automatically build a high-quality software index from biomedical literature.
    Keywords:  biomedical literature; biomedical software; biomedical software index; named entity recognition; natural language processing
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/1460458219869490
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