{"title":"Citizen Science Models in Health Research: an Australian Commentary.","authors":"Ann Borda, Kathleen Gray, Laura Downie","doi":"10.5210/ojphi.v11i3.10358","DOIUrl":"10.5210/ojphi.v11i3.10358","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This qualitative review explores how established citizen science models can inform and support meaningful engagement of public in health research in Australia. In particular, with the growth in participatory health research approaches and increasing consumer participation in contributing to this research through digital technologies, there are gaps in our understanding of best practice in health and biomedical citizen science research to address these paradigm shifts. Notable gaps are how we might more clearly define the parameters of such research and which citizen science models might best support digitally-enabled participation falling within these. Further work in this area is expected to lead to how established citizen science methods may help improve the quality of and the translation of public engagement in health research.</p>","PeriodicalId":74345,"journal":{"name":"Online journal of public health informatics","volume":"11 3","pages":"e23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6975539/pdf/ojphi-11-e23.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37586917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Process Mining of Incoming Patients with Sepsis.","authors":"Renee M Hendricks","doi":"10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10151","url":null,"abstract":"Data mining is a technique for analyzing large amounts of data, in various formats, often called Big Data, in order to gain knowledge about it. The healthcare industry is the next Big Data area of interest as its large variability in patients, their health status and their records which can include image scans, graphical test results, and hand-written physician notes, has been untapped for analysis. In addition to data mining, there is a newer analysis method called process mining. Process mining is similar to data mining in that large data files are reviewed and analyzed, but in this case, event logs specific to a particular process or series of processes, are analyzed. Process mining allows one to understand the initial baseline, determine any bottlenecks or resource constraints, and evaluate a recently implemented change. Process mining was conducted on a hospital event log of patients entering the emergency room with sepsis, to better understand this newer analysis method, to highlight the information discovered, and to determine its role with data mining. Not only did the analysis of the event logs provide process mapping and process analysis, but it also highlighted areas in the clinical operations in need of further investigation, including a possible relationship with patient re-admission and their release method. In addition, the data mining method of creating a histogram, of the process data, was applied, allowing data mining and process mining to be utilized complimentary.","PeriodicalId":74345,"journal":{"name":"Online journal of public health informatics","volume":"11 2 1","pages":"e14"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43605845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Malaria Intermittent Preventive Treatment (IPTi) pharmacovigilance in Malawi: A case of Lilongwe district.","authors":"Prestor J Kubalalika","doi":"10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.9956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.9956","url":null,"abstract":"Background\u0000Intermittent Preventive Treatment with Sulfadoxine-Pyrimethamine in infants (SP-IPTi) is a malaria control strategy which, together with the delivery of routine childhood immunizations, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) was implemented in Lilongwe district of Malawi from September 2008 to November in 2009. A study was performed by Lilongwe District Health Office (DHO) in collaboration with funding from UNICEF to evaluate the safety of SP-IPTi and identify potential new Adverse Events (AEs) spontaneously identified, reported, monitored and evaluated.\u0000\u0000\u0000Methods\u0000A cohort event monitoring study was conducted on 15, 000 infants in 4 Health Facilities (HFs) after administration of SP-IPTi to infants during routine immunizations. A total of about 50 Community Health Workers (CHWs) and volunteers were trained in pharmacovigilance and were supervised by senior personnel in all the five HFs.Infants received half tablets of SP immediately after receiving DPT-HepB+Hib (Pentavalent) 2 vaccine / (IPTi 1), Pentavalent 3 / (IPTi 2) at 10 and 14 weeks respectively and Measles vaccines/(IPTi 3) at 9 months. These children were recorded and their mothers were given diary cards with pictures of possible AEs. Community Health Workers (CHWs) and volunteers followed up every child after 10 days of administration/registration to collect the diary cards where parents indicated types of AEs observed on their children as well as starting and end dates of such possible AEs.The indicated AEs were entered into a computer database from all the collected diary cards according to HFs. Possible side effects/AEs that were looked for were; persistent crying, fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, skin rashes, abdominal pains, insomnia, nausea, mouth sores, and itching among other related possible side effects.\u0000\u0000\u0000Results\u0000A total of 15,105 children received the IPTi and were followed in all four health facilities. Out of this, 50.3% (7,594) were male while 49.7% (7, 511) were females. Of these, 19.2% [1247], 95% CI (276-304) developed AEs as follows; 42% persistent crying, 28% fever, 18% vomiting, 5.2% skin rashes and 6.8% presented with other minor symptoms while 80.8% (13,858) did not develop any side effect. 43.2% (1254) of those who showed symptoms were IPTi1 recipients, 35.3% (1022) received IPTi2 while 21.5% (624) were from those who received IPTi3.\u0000\u0000\u0000Conclusions\u0000This study showed that simultaneous administration of SP-IPTi together with immunizations was a safe strategy for implementation with very minimal serious AEs to infants. In this case therefore, strategies towards strengthening such spontaneous reporting in Malawi should not only be left to service providers but also to beneficiaries or their caregivers.","PeriodicalId":74345,"journal":{"name":"Online journal of public health informatics","volume":"11 2 1","pages":"e9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41745721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Mierzwa, Samir Souidi, Terrye Conroy, Mohammad Abusyed, Hiroki Watarai, Taammy Allen
{"title":"On the Potential, Feasibility, and Effectiveness of Chat Bots in Public Health Research Going Forward.","authors":"S. Mierzwa, Samir Souidi, Terrye Conroy, Mohammad Abusyed, Hiroki Watarai, Taammy Allen","doi":"10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.9998","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.9998","url":null,"abstract":"This paper will discuss whether bots, particularly chat bots, can be useful in public health research and health or pharmacy systems operations. Bots have been discussed for many years; particularly when coupled with artificial intelligence, they offer the opportunity of automating mundane or error-ridden processes and tasks by replacing human involvement. This paper will discuss areas where there are greater advances in the use of bots, as well as areas that may benefit from the use of bots, and will offer practical ways to get started with bot technology. Several popular bot applications and bot development tools along with practical security considerations will be discussed, and a toolbox that one can begin to use to implement bots will be presented.","PeriodicalId":74345,"journal":{"name":"Online journal of public health informatics","volume":"11 2 1","pages":"e4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43234723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Studnicki, D. Reardon, D. Harrison, J. Fisher, I. Skop
{"title":"Improving the Metrics and Data Reporting for Maternal Mortality: A Challenge to Public Health Surveillance and Effective Prevention.","authors":"J. Studnicki, D. Reardon, D. Harrison, J. Fisher, I. Skop","doi":"10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10012","url":null,"abstract":"BACKGROUND\u0000The current measuring metric and reporting methods for assessing maternal mortality are seriously flawed. Evidence-based prevention strategies require consistently reported surveillance data and validated measurement metrics. Main Body: The denominator of live births used in the maternal mortality ratio reinforces the mistaken notion that all maternal deaths are consequent to a live birth and, at the same time, inappropriately inflates the value of the ratio for subpopulations of women with the highest percentage of pregnancies ending in outcomes other than a live birth. Inadequate methods for identifying induced or spontaneous abortion complications assure that most maternal deaths associated with those pregnancy outcomes are unlikely to be attributed. Absent the ability to identify all maternal deaths, and without the ability to differentiate those deaths by specific pregnancy outcomes, existing variations in pregnancy outcome-specific maternal deaths are masked by the use of an aggregated (all outcome) numerator. Under these circumstances, clear and accurate data is not available to inform evidence-based preventive strategies. As the result, algorithms applied for analyzing maternal mortality data may return distorted results Conclusion: Improvement in the effectiveness of maternal mortality surveillance will require: mandatory certification of all fetal losses; linkage of death, birth and all fetal loss (induced and natural) certificates; modification of the structure of the overall maternal mortality ratio to enable pregnancy outcome-specific ratio calculations; development of the appropriate ICD codes which are specific to induced and spontaneous abortions; education for providers on identifying and reporting early pregnancy losses; and, flexible information systems and methods which integrate these capabilities and inform users.","PeriodicalId":74345,"journal":{"name":"Online journal of public health informatics","volume":"11 2 1","pages":"e17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45867105","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Information Technology Call to Action to Support Healthy Homes.","authors":"K. Croke, Edward Mensah","doi":"10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10247","url":null,"abstract":"Advances in information technology over the last decade offer the opportunity to advance the goals of public health advocates to provide safer and healthier home environments. A call to action in public health informatics is needed to realize the benefits of information technology to support healthy home objectives. ","PeriodicalId":74345,"journal":{"name":"Online journal of public health informatics","volume":"11 2 1","pages":"e1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42441516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Taylor L. Read, Elizabeth White, J. P. Cobb, Perry L. Mar, M. Shanmugam, R. Rocha, Sarah Collins Rossetti
{"title":"Development of a Process and Infrastructure to Outreach Stakeholders for Capturing Healthcare System Stress in Emergency Response Situations.","authors":"Taylor L. Read, Elizabeth White, J. P. Cobb, Perry L. Mar, M. Shanmugam, R. Rocha, Sarah Collins Rossetti","doi":"10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10048","url":null,"abstract":"Real time data provided by frontline clinicians could be used to direct immediate resources during a public health emergency and inform increased preparedness for future events. The United States Critical Illness and Injury Trials Group Program for Emergency Preparedness (USCIIT-PREP), a group of expert critical care and emergency medicine physicians at various academic medical centers across the US, aims to enhance the national capability of rapid electronic data collection, along with analysis and dissemination of findings. To achieve these aims, USCIIT-PREP created a process for real-time data capture that relies on a curated and engaged network of clinical providers from various geographical regions to respond to short online \"Pulse\" queries about healthcare system stress. During a period of three years, five queries were created and distributed. The first two queries were used to develop and validate the data collection infrastructure. Results are reported for the last three queries between June 2015 and March 2016. Response rates consistently ranged from 39% to 42%. Our team demonstrated that our system and processes were ready for creation and rapid dissemination of episodic queries for rapid data collection, transmittal, and analysis through a curated national network of clinician responders during a public health emergency. USCIIT-PREP aims to further increase the response rate through additional engagement efforts within the network, to continue to grow the clinician responder database, and to optimize additional query content.","PeriodicalId":74345,"journal":{"name":"Online journal of public health informatics","volume":"11 2 1","pages":"e2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47676647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"VINCENT: A visual analytics system for investigating the online vaccine debate.","authors":"Anton B. Ninkov, K. Sedig","doi":"10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10114","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports and describes VINCENT, a visual analytics system that is designed to help public health stakeholders (i.e., users) make sense of data from websites involved in the online debate about vaccines. VINCENT allows users to explore visualizations of data from a group of 37 vaccine-focused websites. These websites differ in their position on vaccines, topics of focus about vaccines, geographic location, and sentiment towards the efficacy and morality of vaccines, specific and general ones. By integrating webometrics, natural language processing of website text, data visualization, and human-data interaction, VINCENT helps users explore complex data that would be difficult to understand, and, if at all possible, to analyze without the aid of computational tools. The objectives of this paper are to explore A) the feasibility of developing a visual analytics system that integrates webometrics, natural language processing of website text, data visualization, and human-data interaction in a seamless manner; B) how a visual analytics system can help with the investigation of the online vaccine debate; and C) what needs to be taken into consideration when developing such a system. This paper demonstrates that visual analytics systems can integrate different computational techniques; that such systems can help with the exploration of online public health debates that are distributed across a set of websites; and that care should go into the design of the different components of such systems.","PeriodicalId":74345,"journal":{"name":"Online journal of public health informatics","volume":"11 2 1","pages":"e5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48738745","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Implementation of an EMR System for a Comprehensive Dental Service within a Large Regional Hospital Network: Challenges and Opportunities Presented by the Introduction of new Technology.","authors":"Stephen Swanik","doi":"10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10131","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>The development of new information technology has significant effects on the health care system, and its implementation and the associated change management process can bring some positive changes and gains in understanding, but there are challenges with making the transition. These benefits and challenges are explored in the context of a hospital based dental department. Additionally, the concept of the integration of oral health to overall systemic health is explored in context with an Electronic Medical Records system implementation, and the American Dental Association's recent recognition of dental anesthesiology as a clinical subspecialty.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>Qualitative survey of attending dental faculty members of the department, who represent a broad range of dental specialties and experience in private practice, hospital based practice, teaching, and public health practice.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The faculty survey yielded some consistent themes, ranging from enhanced information to make better diagnoses, to challenges in transitioning to EMR, as well as concerns about data security and too much time and effort in front of a computer screen.</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>A brief summary of the history of the stand-alone development of dentistry is given, which contributed to the separate development of dental EMRs from hospital EMRs. The various modalities of clinical care provided by the Department of Dentistry at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, Chicago, IL are presented to give a scope of the areas of need a successful EMR solution must meet in a hospital based dental setting. Public health aspects are included in the discussion.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Macro level health data sets (ie NHANES, state level datasets) have the potential to be expanded to include more thorough data, combining medical health data and oral health data in the same datasets.</p>","PeriodicalId":74345,"journal":{"name":"Online journal of public health informatics","volume":"11 2","pages":"e19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6788901/pdf/ojphi-11-e19.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41222881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"U.S. Opioid Epidemic: Impact on Public Health and Review of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs).","authors":"Sunghee H Boté","doi":"10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10113","DOIUrl":"10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10113","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>In recent years, the devastating effects of U.S. opioid epidemic has been making news headlines. This report explores background information and trends on opioid misuse, overdose fatalities and its impact on public health. In addition, various efforts to improve surveillance, timeliness of data and Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) integration and interoperability are reviewed.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>PubMed and internet searches were performed to find information on the U.S. opioid epidemic. In addition, searches were performed to retrieve information about PDMPs and state-specific mandates along with presentation slides and learnings from the 2018 National Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit in Atlanta, GA.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>It is clear that the U.S. opioid epidemic has a tremendous impact on public health including the next generation of children. Various data, surveillance & technology-driven efforts including CDC-Funded Enhanced State Opioid Overdose Surveillance Program (ESOOS) and use of telemedicine for opioid use disorder treatment aim to improve prevention, treatment and targeted interventions. In addition, PDMP integration and interoperability efforts are advancing to provide prescribers meaningful decision support tools.</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>The opioid epidemic has a complex impact on public health intertwined with variable factors such as mental health and social determinants of health. Given the statistics and studies that suggest many of the illicit opioid users start with prescription opioids, continued advancement in the area of PDMP integration and interoperability is necessary. The PDMP integrated clinical decision support systems need to supply to healthcare providers access to complete, timely and evidence-based information that can meaningfully inform prescribing decisions and communication with patients that affect measurable outcomes.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>While Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) are valuable tools for providers in making informed prescribing decisions, the variable state mandates and varying degrees of integration and interoperability across states may limit their potential as meaningful decision support tools. Sharing best practices, challenges and lessons learned among states and organizations may inform strategic and systematic use of PDMPs to improve public health outcomes.</p>","PeriodicalId":74345,"journal":{"name":"Online journal of public health informatics","volume":"11 2","pages":"e18"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6788897/pdf/ojphi-11-e18.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41222882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}