Medicine 2.0Pub Date : 2013-08-08eCollection Date: 2013-07-01DOI: 10.2196/med20.2717
Mark Merolli, Kathleen Gray, Fernando Martin-Sanchez
{"title":"Developing a framework to generate evidence of health outcomes from social media use in chronic disease management.","authors":"Mark Merolli, Kathleen Gray, Fernando Martin-Sanchez","doi":"10.2196/med20.2717","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/med20.2717","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>While there is an abundance of evidence-based practice (EBP) recommendations guiding management of various chronic diseases, evidence suggesting best practice for using social media to improve health outcomes is inadequate. The variety of social media platforms, multiple potential uses, inconsistent definitions, and paucity of rigorous studies, make it difficult to measure health outcomes reliably in chronic disease management. Most published investigations report on an earlier generation of online tools, which are not as user-centered, participatory, engaging, or collaborative, and thus may work differently for health self-management.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>The challenge to establish a sound evidence base for social media use in chronic disease starts with the need to define criteria and methods to generate and evaluate evidence. The authors' key objective is to develop a framework for research and practice that addresses this challenge.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This paper forms part of a larger research project that presents a conceptual framework of how evidence of health outcomes can be generated from social media use, allowing social media to be utilized in chronic disease management more effectively. Using mixed methods incorporating a qualitative literature review, a survey and a pilot intervention, the research closely examines the therapeutic affordances of social media, people with chronic pain (PWCP) as a subset of chronic disease management, valid outcome measurement of patient-reported (health) outcomes (PRO), the individual needs of people living with chronic disease, and finally translation of the combined results to improve evidence-based decision making about social media use in this context.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Extensive review highlights various affordances of social media that may prove valuable to understanding social media's effect on individual health outcomes. However, without standardized PRO instruments, we are unable to definitively investigate these effects. The proposed framework that we offer outlines how therapeutic affordances of social media coupled with valid and reliable PRO measurement may be used to generate evidence of improvements in health outcomes, as well as guide evidence-based decision making in the future about social media use as part of chronic disease self-management.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The results will (1) inform a framework for conducting research into health outcomes from social media use in chronic disease, as well as support translating the findings into evidence of improved health outcomes, and (2) inform a set of recommendations for evidence-based decision making about social media use as part of chronic disease self-management. These outcomes will fill a gap in the knowledge and resources available to individuals managing a chronic disease, their clinicians and other researchers in chronic disease and the field of","PeriodicalId":90648,"journal":{"name":"Medicine 2.0","volume":"2 2","pages":"e3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4085121/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"32546328","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}
Medicine 2.0Pub Date : 2013-07-18eCollection Date: 2013-07-01DOI: 10.2196/med20.2269
Shirley Ann Williams, Melissa Terras, Claire Warwick
{"title":"How Twitter Is Studied in the Medical Professions: A Classification of Twitter Papers Indexed in PubMed.","authors":"Shirley Ann Williams, Melissa Terras, Claire Warwick","doi":"10.2196/med20.2269","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/med20.2269","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Since their inception, Twitter and related microblogging systems have provided a rich source of information for researchers and have attracted interest in their affordances and use. Since 2009 PubMed has included 123 journal articles on medicine and Twitter, but no overview exists as to how the field uses Twitter in research.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>This paper aims to identify published work relating to Twitter within the fields indexed by PubMed, and then to classify it. This classification will provide a framework in which future researchers will be able to position their work, and to provide an understanding of the current reach of research using Twitter in medical disciplines.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Papers on Twitter and related topics were identified and reviewed. The papers were then qualitatively classified based on the paper's title and abstract to determine their focus. The work that was Twitter focused was studied in detail to determine what data, if any, it was based on, and from this a categorization of the data set size used in the studies was developed. Using open coded content analysis additional important categories were also identified, relating to the primary methodology, domain, and aspect.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>As of 2012, PubMed comprises more than 21 million citations from biomedical literature, and from these a corpus of 134 potentially Twitter related papers were identified, eleven of which were subsequently found not to be relevant. There were no papers prior to 2009 relating to microblogging, a term first used in 2006. Of the remaining 123 papers which mentioned Twitter, thirty were focused on Twitter (the others referring to it tangentially). The early Twitter focused papers introduced the topic and highlighted the potential, not carrying out any form of data analysis. The majority of published papers used analytic techniques to sort through thousands, if not millions, of individual tweets, often depending on automated tools to do so. Our analysis demonstrates that researchers are starting to use knowledge discovery methods and data mining techniques to understand vast quantities of tweets: the study of Twitter is becoming quantitative research.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>This work is to the best of our knowledge the first overview study of medical related research based on Twitter and related microblogging. We have used 5 dimensions to categorize published medical related research on Twitter. This classification provides a framework within which researchers studying development and use of Twitter within medical related research, and those undertaking comparative studies of research, relating to Twitter in the area of medicine and beyond, can position and ground their work.</p>","PeriodicalId":90648,"journal":{"name":"Medicine 2.0","volume":"2 2","pages":"e2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4084770/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"32546329","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}
Medicine 2.0Pub Date : 2013-05-21eCollection Date: 2013-01-01DOI: 10.2196/med20.2014
Pierre Elias, Nithin O Rajan, Kara McArthur, Clifford C Dacso
{"title":"InSpire to Promote Lung Assessment in Youth: Evolving the Self-Management Paradigms of Young People With Asthma.","authors":"Pierre Elias, Nithin O Rajan, Kara McArthur, Clifford C Dacso","doi":"10.2196/med20.2014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/med20.2014","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Asthma is the most common chronic disease in childhood, disproportionately affecting urban, minority, and disadvantaged children. Individualized care plans supported by daily lung-function monitoring can reduce morbidity and mortality. However, despite 20 years of interventions to increase adherence, only 50% of US youth accurately follow their care plans, which leads to millions of preventable hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and sick days every year. We present a feasibility study of a novel, user-centered approach to increasing young people's lung-function monitoring and asthma self-care. Promoting Lung Assessment in Youth (PLAY) helps young people become active managers of their asthma through the Web 2.0 principles of participation, cocreation, and information sharing. Specifically, PLAY combines an inexpensive, portable spirometer with the motivational power and convenience of mobile phones and virtual-community gaming.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>The objective of this study was to develop and pilot test InSpire, a fully functional interface between a handheld spirometer and an interactive game and individualized asthma-care instant-messaging system housed on a mobile phone.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>InSpire is an application for mobile smartphones that creates a compelling world in which youth collaborate with their physicians on managing their asthma. Drawing from design-theory on global timer mechanics and role playing, we incentivized completing spirometry maneuvers by making them an engaging part of a game young people would want to play. The data can be sent wirelessly to health specialists and return care recommendations to patients in real-time. By making it portable and similar to applications normally desired by the target demographic, InSpire is able to seamlessly incorporate asthma management into their lifestyle.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>We describe the development process of building and testing the InSpire prototype. To our knowledge, the prototype is a first-of-its kind mobile one-stop shop for asthma management. Feasibility testing in children aged 7 to 14 with asthma assessed likability of the graphical user interface as well as young people's interest in our incentivizing system. Nearly 100% of children surveyed said they would play games like those in PLAY if they involved breathing into a spirometer. Two-thirds said they would prefer PLAY over the spirometer alone, whereas 1/3 would prefer having both. No children said they would prefer the spirometer over PLAY.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Previous efforts at home-monitoring of asthma in children have experienced rapid decline in adherence. An inexpensive monitoring technology combined with the computation, interactive communication, and display ability of a mobile phone is a promising approach to sustainable adherence to lung-function monitoring and care plans. An exciting game that redefines the way yo","PeriodicalId":90648,"journal":{"name":"Medicine 2.0","volume":"2 1","pages":"e1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4084766/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"32546323","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}
Medicine 2.0Pub Date : 2012-08-14eCollection Date: 2012-07-01DOI: 10.2196/med20.1741
Elizabeth Murray
{"title":"Web-based interventions for behavior change and self-management: potential, pitfalls, and progress.","authors":"Elizabeth Murray","doi":"10.2196/med20.1741","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/med20.1741","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The potential advantages of using the Internet to deliver self-care and behavior-change programs are well recognized. An aging population combined with the increasing prevalence of long-term conditions and more effective medical interventions place financial strain on all health care systems. Web-based interventions have the potential to combine the tailored approach of face-to-face interventions with the scalability of public health interventions that have low marginal costs per additional user. From a patient perspective, Web-based interventions can be highly attractive because they are convenient, easily accessible, and can maintain anonymity/privacy. Recognition of this potential has led to research in developing and evaluating Web-based interventions for self-management of long-term conditions and behavior change. Numerous systematic reviews have confirmed the effectiveness of some Web-based interventions, but a number of unanswered questions still remain. This paper reviews the progress made in developing and evaluating Web-based interventions and considers three challenging areas: equity, effectiveness, and implementation. The impact of Web-based interventions on health inequalities remains unclear. Although some have argued that such interventions can increase access to underserved communities, there is evidence to suggest that reliance on Web-based interventions may exacerbate health inequalities by excluding those on the \"wrong\" side of the digital divide. Although most systematic reviews have found a positive effect on outcomes of interest, effect sizes tend to be small and not all interventions are successful. Further work is needed to determine why some interventions work and others do not. This includes considering the \"active ingredients\" or mechanism of action of these complex interventions and the context in which they are used. Are there certain demographic, psychological, or clinical factors that promote or inhibit success? Are some behaviors or some clinical problems more amenable to change by computer-based interventions? Equally problematic is the issue of implementation and integration of such programs into routine clinical practice. Many eHealth projects end when the research is concluded and fail to become part of mainstream clinical care. One way of addressing these challenges is to apply the Medical Research Council framework for developing, evaluating, and implementing complex interventions. This includes having a strong theoretical foundation, developing a proposed mechanism or pathway of action, ensuring that the evaluation adequately reflects this proposed pathway, and considering implementation from the beginning of the development process. </p>","PeriodicalId":90648,"journal":{"name":"Medicine 2.0","volume":"1 2","pages":"e3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4084772/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"32546322","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}
Medicine 2.0Pub Date : 2012-07-06eCollection Date: 2012-07-01DOI: 10.2196/med20.1996
Martina Moick, Ralf Terlutter
{"title":"Physicians' motives for professional internet use and differences in attitudes toward the internet-informed patient, physician-patient communication, and prescribing behavior.","authors":"Martina Moick, Ralf Terlutter","doi":"10.2196/med20.1996","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/med20.1996","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Physicians have differing motives for using the Internet and Internet-related services in their professional work. These motives may affect their evaluation of patients who bring with them health-related information from the Internet. Differing motives may also affect physician-patient communication and subsequent prescribing behavior.</p><p><strong>Objectives: </strong>to segment physicians into types based on their motives for using the internet in connection with professional activities and to analyze how those segments differ in their attitudes in three areas: toward patients who bring along Internet-sourced information; in their own subsequent prescribing behavior; and in their attitudes toward using the Internet to communicate with patients in future.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We surveyed 287 German physicians online from three medical fields. To assess physicians' motives for using the Internet for their professional activities, we asked them to rate their level of agreement with statements on a 7-point scale. Motive statements were reduced to motive dimensions using principal component analysis, and 2-step cluster analysis based on motive dimensions identified different segments of physicians. Several statements assessed agreement or disagreement on a 7-point scale physicians' attitudes toward patients' bringing Internet information to the consultation and their own subsequent prescribing behavior. Further, we asked physicians to indicate on a 7-point scale their valuation of the Internet for physician-patient communication in the future. Data were then subjected to variance and contingency analyses.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>we identified three motive dimensions for internet use: (1) being on the cutting edge and for self-expression (Cronbach alpha = .88), (2) efficiency and effectiveness (alpha = .79), and (3) diversity and convenience (alpha = .71). These three factors accounted for 71.4% of the variance. Based on physicians' motives for using the Internet, four types of physician Internet user were identified: (1) the Internet Advocate (2), Efficiency-Oriented, (3) Internet Critic, and (4) Driven Self-expressionist. Groups differed significantly concerning (1) their attitude toward informed patients in general (F 1234 = 9.215, P < .001), (2) perceived improvement in the physician-patient relationship Internet information brings (F 1234 = 5.386, P < .001), (3) perceived accuracy of information the patient brings (F 1234 = 3.658, P = .01), and (4) perceived amount of time needed to devote to an Internet-informed patient (F 1234 = 3.356, P = .02). Physician segments did not differ significantly in reported prescribing behavior (F 1234 = 1.910, P = .13). However, attitudes toward using the Internet to communicate with patients in future differed significantly (F 1234 = 23.242, P < .001).</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Based on self-reporting by German physicians of their motives for profess","PeriodicalId":90648,"journal":{"name":"Medicine 2.0","volume":"1 2","pages":"e2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4084769/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"32545870","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}
Medicine 2.0Pub Date : 2012-04-25eCollection Date: 2012-01-01DOI: 10.2196/med2.2039
Beni Gómez-Zúñiga, Luis Fernandez-Luque, Modesta Pousada, Eulàlia Hernández-Encuentra, Manuel Armayones
{"title":"ePatients on YouTube: analysis of four experiences from the patients' perspective.","authors":"Beni Gómez-Zúñiga, Luis Fernandez-Luque, Modesta Pousada, Eulàlia Hernández-Encuentra, Manuel Armayones","doi":"10.2196/med2.2039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/med2.2039","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Many patients share their personal experiences and opinions using online video platforms. These videos are watched by millions of health consumers and health care professionals. Although it has become a popular phenomenon, little is known about patients who share videos online and why they do so.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>We aimed to explore the motivations and challenges faced by patients who share videos about their health and experiences on YouTube. As part of a conference discussion, we asked several patients actively engaged on YouTube to make a video explaining their motivations. This paper discusses these videos.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>In this qualitative study, we performed an analysis of the videos created by 4 patients about their self-reported motivations and challenges they face as YouTube users. First, two judges compared the transcriptions and decided the exact wording when confusing content was found. Second, two judges categorized the content of the videos to identify the major themes.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>four main categories emerged: (1) the origin or cause for making the first video, (2) the objectives that they achieve by continuing to make videos, (3) the perception of community, and (4) the negative consequences of the experience.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The main reason for making videos was to bridge the gap between traditional health information about their diseases and everyday life. The first consequence of sharing their life on YouTube was a loss of privacy. However, they also experienced the positive effects of expressing their feelings, being part of a large community of peers, and helping others to deal with a chronic condition.</p>","PeriodicalId":90648,"journal":{"name":"Medicine 2.0","volume":"1 1","pages":"e1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4084771/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"32545869","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}