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Health Care Meets Online Social Media |
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A report prepared by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn for the California HealthCare Foundation entitled The Wisdom of Patients: Health Care Meets Online Social Media, details how social media on the Internet is educating health care consumers and providers. Social media includes social networks (MySpace, FaceBook), blogs, wikis, picture-sharing (Flickr) and video-sharing (YouTube) sites, as well as web-based ”communities” where patients with the same disease/condition can meet. Social media appeared as the Internet evolved from strict information retrieval with read-only capability (Web 1.0) to the interactive Web 2.0, which allows people to post, share, and comment-on information. Ms. Sarasohn-Kahn refers to this sharing of health-related information as Health 2.0 and describes how this new medium facilitates the grouping together of people with similar health concerns. This results in the posting of health information that is more important and relevant to the individual consumer. These online collaborations are changing the way that patients, health care providers, and researchers learn about therapeutic regimens and disease management. In her comprehensive report, she details the positives and negatives of Health 2.0 and predicts how it will evolve in the future. One example in the report really demonstrated to me how this dynamic medium can be useful to an individual patient. On a social network called PatientsLikeMe, “Joe” posted that he had been trying for 10 years to manage his leg spasticity, a common symptom of multiple sclerosis. His doctor had prescribed a low dose of Baclofen, a muscle relaxant, telling him that a higher dose would cause him problems. After “Joe” joined the network, he learned that people in the MS online “community” were taking up to 10 times the dosage that his doctor had prescribed for him. “Joe” then asked his doctor to increase his dosage and his condition improved. If it hadn’t been for the social network that “Joe” joined, he would still be suffering from leg spasticity. Thinking about this example, I also thought how the network had encouraged “Joe”’s doctor to try a new treatment regimen that he ordinarily never would have tried, and how this new regimen turned out to be quite successful for ”Joe”. Ms. Sarasohn-Kahn includes a glossary of social media terms and a list of useful Health 2.0 websites in her very interesting report. Definitely good reading! |
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Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
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Comments (0)April 22, 2008
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A Tip for All You PubMed Searchers |
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For all of you who search MEDLINE on PubMed, be sure to check the Details feature after you type in your search query to see exactly what search you are running. If you search for a text word, PubMed will usually add the corresponding MeSH term to your search query. That means that you are searching the title and the abstract of the articles for your text word and the index terms for the MeSH term. If you check Details and the MeSH term has not been added to your search, your search retrieval will be adversely affected. For example, and I use this example in my PubMed searching class, if you type “cancer” into the PubMed query box, a click on Details shows that you are really searching for “cancer” as a text word OR “neoplasms” as a MeSH term. If the search engine does not translate the text word to the MeSH term, then you need to identify the appropriate MeSH term and “OR” that into your search to insure a comprehensive search. To further demonstrate how Details works, check the Details section of the PubMed tutorial. The searcher enters the text terms “zinc infant growth” into the query box. The search engine “OR’s” in the MeSH terms “zinc”, “infant”, “growth”, as well as the subheading “growth and development”. Now your search is comprehensive and complete - searching for text words in the title and abstract and MeSH terms as indexing terms. I recently used the Details feature to solve a “mystery” that I encountered while demonstrating an author search during my class. Searching for the author’s name (e.g. ”walker am”) gave me 458 results. Searching for the author’s name, specifying the search in the author field only, (e.g. ”walker am [au]”) gave me 457 results. Checking the Details feature revealed that searching “walker am” was searching both the Author field and the Investigator field. Checking the Details feature while searching “walker am [au]” revealed that I was indeed just searching the author field. So, PubMed searchers, be sure your “attention to detail”includes Details! |
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Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
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April 4, 2008
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Gov. Rendell Signs Executive Order Creating Health Data Exchange |
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Pennsylvania’s Governor Rendell recently signed an executive order creating the Pennsylvania Health Information Exchange (PHIX). This exchange will give health care providers improved access to a patient’s clinical data and is expected to lead to safer and more efficient patient care. It is part of the Governor’s Prescription for Pennsylvania health care plan, which the Governor introduced last year to address the quality, accessibility, and affordability of health care for all Pennsylvanians. PHIX will provide the technology to store the patient’s electronic health records and electronic prescription information by sharing data that is captured in the physician’s office or hospital. Instead of separate online systems used by doctor’s offices, hospitals, laboratories, and pharmacies, PHIX will integrate these records so they can be shared by all of the patient’s health care providers. This health data exchange will provide clinicians with important medical information about their patients to enable them to treat them quickly and more efficiently. A physician can immediately see what laboratory tests and radiology exams were recently performed, thus preventing the reordering of these tests. This reduces costs and avoids the wait for the second test results. The doctor knows immediately what condition(s) his patient is being treated for and also what medications he is taking. All this becomes critically important and perhaps life-saving if an unconscious patient is transported to an emergency room and unable to give the treating physician his medical history. It will be interesting to follow this program and see how it works. Especially considering my concern for the privacy and security issues involved in online PHR’s. (See my previous blog on this topic.) |
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Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
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March 13, 2008
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Heart Devices can be Hacked! |
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The study will be presented at a symposium on computer security in May. |
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Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
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An March 6, 2008
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Online Personal Health Records and the Privacy Issue |
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The San Diego Union-Tribune, in a March 5 article, reported on the Health 2.0 Conference recently held in San Diego, which showcased the latest interactive health care offerings on the Internet, including systems which allow an individual to post their personal health record (PHR) online. Both Google, with its upcoming Google Health, and Microsoft, with its upcoming HealthVault, figure to be major players in the PHR business. To show the downside of PHR’s , the article also referred to a February 20 report by the San Diego based World Privacy Forum which determined that the posting of a PHR was a genuine threat to an individual’s privacy. The San Diego Union-Tribune article said that the Health 2.0 Conference did not even list privacy and security matters on its program, which is fairly surprising to me - ignore the issues and they go away? The World Privacy Forum was quoted as saying in their report, “Any consumer worried about the privacy of personal health information should proceed with great caution before agreeing to sign up for a (personal health record)”. This is because most health care websites are not covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), the federal law that requires health care providers to protect the privacy of an individual’s health record. Pam Dixon, the Forum’s executive director, expressed concern that an insurance company might use an individual’s online PHR to turn down their application for coverage. And that’s only one of the many privacy concerns. For a detailed description of the different kinds of PHR systems, what determines whether or not the system vendor is covered under HIPPA, and all the privacy issues involved, see the World Privacy Forum report. |
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Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
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February 27, 2008
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Computers Better Diagnosticians than Clinicians??? |
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An article in The Society Guardian recently reported on a paper published in the journal Brain that said that computer software can diagnose Alzheimer’s disease more reliably than clinical experts. The journal paper, written by researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging in London, reported that the software could pick out the brain scans of Alzheimer’s patients 96% of the time. The software makes the diagnosis by analyzing the patient’s MRI brain scan and classifying it as depicting a normal aging brain, a brain showing dementia, or a brain exhibiting the characteristics of Alzheimer’s. The article compares the software’s accuracy rate to that of a trained clinician who on average will correctly diagnose Alzheimer’s 85% of the time. The clinician makes his diagnosis by using brain scans, blood tests, and interviews but the diagnosis can only be confirmed after the death of the patient. The Guardian article quotes Richard Frackowiak, one of the authors of the paper: “The advantage of using computers is that they prove cheaper, faster and more accurate than the current method of diagnosis”. Frackowiak also said that early diagnosis using the software could prove useful in determining the efficacy of new drug treatments before the patient’s brain is severely damaged. It will be interesting to see whether the use of this software becomes the standard of care in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. |
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Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
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February 15, 2008
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Interesting Trickle Down Effect |
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Just before Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s nearly $45 billion takeover bid, a well-known health information website announced it was lowering its 2008 outlook forecast partly because of this bid, according to a New York Post article. WebMD has an advertising agreement with Yahoo which they signed last October. Yahoo agreed to supply both search and display ads on WebMD’s sites, a job that formerly was done by Google. The agreement also allows reciprocity between companies, WebMD can display ads on Yahoo websites. Microsoft’s possible takeover of Yahoo was one of the factors that WebMD took into consideration before it lowered its outlook. They were concerned that if the takeover took place, the new partner wouldn’t be quite as committed to working with WebMD as Yahoo was. According to the Post article, the takeover wasn’t the only reason for WebMD’s more conservative 2008 forecast, but it was the one that I found particularly interesting. And now Rupert Murdoch has expressed interest in acquiring Yahoo according to a recent Portfolio.com post. Also, chances are that Microsoft will not give up so easily after showing the world that Yahoo is a prime prospect for takeover. Stay tuned to see if WebMD’s downsized forecast does become reality and also to see what other health related websites are affected if Yahoo ceases to exist. |
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Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
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January 30, 2008
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Public Access to NIH Research Now Mandated by Law |
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The recently enacted Consolidated Appropriations Act for FY:2008 (H.R. 2764, signed into law December 26, 2007) includes a provision which directs the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide the public with free online access to findings from its funded research. This directs the NIH to change its existing Public Access Policy which was implemented as a voluntary measure in 2005. Researchers will now be required to upload electronic copies of their peer-reviewed articles onto the National Library of Medicine’s, PubMed Central. Full text of these articles will be available and searchable in PubMed Central no later than 12 months after journal publication. Even with a one year delay, open access to the research results of all the Institutes of the NIH will greatly benefit patients and their families, non-NIH researchers, and university research departments in general. It will also increase new discoveries as the NIH results will be more readily available for others to expand on. The section of the Act that mandates this change: “SEC. 218. The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.” To comply with this Act, NIH released a revised policy on public access to NIH funded research. Their target date for enforcement is April 7, 2008. |
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Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
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January 16, 2008
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English Physicians Plan to Boycott Patient Health Record Database |
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Nearly two thirds of family physicians in England plan to boycott the government’s attempt to create a database of 50 million National Health Service patients’ electronic health records, according to a poll by Medix, a health online research organization, the Guardian Unlimited reports. More than 1,000 family physicians were polled about the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT). The patient health record database is a £12.4 billion (or $25.6 billion) project to modernize the NHS’ IT systems. Due to fear that sensitive personal data could be stolen by hackers and blackmailers, 59% of the General Practice physicians polled said that they would not upload any record without the patient’s specific consent. This is an increase from the 38% of GPs who were polled last year who said that they would not put their patients’ health records on the database without consent. The increased skepticism about the online security of confidential patient records is occurring despite campaigning by the NHS’s IT procurement agency to persuade doctors that the “summary care record” plan would save lives. The Medix poll also found that 70% of GP’s and hospital doctors do not think that the program is a good use of NHS resources and only 1% rate its progress as good or excellent. Three-quarters of those polled said they wanted an independent review before futher monies were committed to the program. Despite negative vibes from physicians, a spokesman for the procurement agency did say that patients whose records were added to the database thought the program had a potential for improving safety, according to the Guardian article. Further information about the program can be found at Connecting for Health’s website. It will be interesting to see how this program progresses and whether or not confidentiality is compromised and/or patients’ lives really are saved. |
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Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
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December 18, 2007
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MayoClinic.com |
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For those of you who have taken my Medical Resources class, you know that MayoClinic.com is my favorite resource for comprehensive information on a medical disease or condition. This site is owned by the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research and, yes, it is associated with THE Mayo Clinic. This site offers health information, self-improvement and disease management tools to empower people to manage their health and is written with the layperson in mind. The medical editors who vet the health information on the site are experienced Mayo Clinic clinicians and educators who work with the web content producers to ensure that all information is accurate and clearly written. The entire website can be searched or the A-Z medical topic list can be accessed by first letter of disease or condition. For comprehensive health information, I prefer to use the A-Z list. An article will be returned, with the table of contents at the beginning, which can be used to lead you directly to the particular type of information about the disease or condition that you are interested in: introduction, signs and symptoms, causes, risk factors, when to seek medical advice, screening and dignosis, complications, treatment, self-care, and coping skills. Amongst the wealth of information and health-related features on this site are a symptom checker and a first aid guide. I do have to add a disclaimer here - this site should never be used in place of a physician and never for self-diagnosis. It should be used as an adjunct to a consultation with your physician and to help suggest questions to ask your doctor about your particular condition. |
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Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
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