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General interest items edited by Janice Flahiff

[Journal Article] The Emergent Discipline of Health Web Science -with related links and articles

Tim Berners-Lee: The World Wide Web - Opportun...

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Came across this article through an online professional health community.  It describes how the Internet is changing approaches to healthcare issues.  Current evidence shows Web sites can empower professional and lay alike through informational Web pages, social media, health record annotations and linkages for exploration and analysis. However, these applications can be built on to better serve the health care related needs of all.  The Web can be better” engineered for health research, clinical research, and clinical practice. In addition, it is desirable to support consumers who utilize the Web for gathering information about health and well-being and to elucidate approaches to providing social support to both patients and caregivers. Finally, there is the motivation to improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of health care.” The paper goes on to outline channelling further efforts in these areas.

  • Social networks
  • Patient Engagement Through Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing
  • Sensors, Smart Technology and Expert Patients
  • “Big Data”, Semantic, and Other Integration Technologies
  • Rapid, Automated, Contextualized Knowledge Discovery and Application

From the full text of the article

Abstract

The transformative power of the Internet on all aspects of daily life, including health care, has been widely recognized both in the scientific literature and in public discourse. Viewed through the various lenses of diverse academic disciplines, these transformations reveal opportunities realized, the promise of future advances, and even potential problems created by the penetration of the World Wide Web for both individuals and for society at large. Discussions about the clinical and health research implications of the widespread adoption of information technologies, including the Internet, have been subsumed under the disciplinary label of Medicine 2.0. More recently, however, multi-disciplinary research has emerged that is focused on the achievement and promise of the Web itself, as it relates to healthcare issues. In this paper, we explore and interrogate the contributions of the burgeoning field of Web Science in relation to health maintenance, health care, and health policy. From this, we introduce Health Web Science as a subdiscipline of Web Science, distinct from but overlapping with Medicine 2.0. This paper builds on the presentations and subsequent interdisciplinary dialogue that developed among Web-oriented investigators present at the 2012 Medicine 2.0 Conference in Boston, Massachusetts.

Read the entire article here

Related links

The Health WebScience Lab is a multi-disciplinary research initiative between Moray College UHI, NHS Grampian, HIE OpenFinder and Sitekit Solutions Ltd based in the Highlands of Scotland committed to improving health locally, nationally and internationally.

This initiative will lead, connect and collaborate on research in the emerging discipline of WebScience and Healthcare to create communities which take responsibility for their own wellbeing and self-care. This will be achieved through the application of information and other communication technologies via the internet across a whole range of functions that affect health care thereby stimulating novel research between health care professionals, the community at large and industry.

studies ” the effects of the interaction of healthcare with the web, and of the web with healthcare” and how one can be effectively harnessed to change the other

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September 6, 2013 Posted by | Biomedical Research Resources, Consumer Health, Educational Resources (Health Professionals), Health Education (General Public), Librarian Resources, Web 2.0 Assignments | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Troubled Teens Could Benefit from Online Access to Health Records, Say Researchers

 

From the 22 October 2012 article at ScienceDaily

 

 Online health records could be surprisingly useful for at-risk teenagers who cycle through the juvenile justice system. A new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center found that these young people have high rates of Internet use and an unexpectedly favorable attitude toward accessing their health records online.

Teens who get in trouble with the law could particularly benefit from online health records because they generally have worse health than other adolescents — and no one keeping track of the health care they do receive. These teens’ health problems range from spotty immunization histories to chronic diseases such as asthma, sexually transmitted infections, mental illnesses and substance abuse. And not only do poverty, difficult relationships with their parents and frequent moves make it hard for them to get consistent health care, these problems also increase the chances that doctors who are treating them will not have access to their medical histories..

…

The teens were enthusiastic about the option, with 90 percent saying it would be useful to have their health information automatically put online so they could access it later.

“I didn’t expect this level of interest because they don’t typically think of health as something that’s part of their daily lives,” Anoshiravani said, adding that these teens engage in risky behaviors that make them seem cavalier about their health.

These teens’ need for reliable and accessible health records is made even more urgent because they often do not have family members overseeing health-related chores, such as tracking immunizations and medications, checking lab results or recording their medical history. The lack of records is a problem not just in the short term but also when these teens reach adulthood, especially for those who survived serious medical events in childhood. “They may turn 18 and not know they were born with a heart defect that was surgically repaired,” Anoshiravani said.

Contrast that situation to a typical teenager. “A parent or grandparent is going with them to the doctor and keeping their health records,” Anoshiravani said, noting that troubled teens don’t have that help. And it’s not realistic to expect these teens to keep a hard copy of their medical file. “Carrying around pieces of paper that they could lose did not make sense to them, but having a place to check this information online did make a lot of sense,” he added.

The researchers were surprised to find that the teenagers would also share online health records: The vast majority of the respondents were willing to share their records with doctors and half said they would want to share the information with their parents.

The next step, Anoshiravani said, is to implement and test online health records for at-risk teens. The biggest challenge will revolve around the issue of information-sharing, since minors’ parents are entitled to see some parts of their health records, while other types of records cannot be shared with parents without the patients’ consent….

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October 22, 2012 Posted by | Consumer Health | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Better medicine, brought to you by big data through new types of data analysis

 

A good overview of how improved data analysis and presentation is improving health care delivery.

I especially liked the slideshare presentation found below in Related Articles.
The 42 slides in Big data – a brief overview outlines what big data is, its sources and processes, how it is analyzed, current “players”,examples, market analysis, future, and opportunities.

From the 15 July 2012 blog post at Gigaom

Slowly but surely, health care is becoming a killer app for big data. Whether it’s Hadoop, machine learning, natural-language processing or some other technique, folks in the worlds of medicine and hospital administration understand that new types of data analysis are the key to helping them take their fields to the next level.

Here are some of the interesting use cases we’ve written about over the past year or so, and a few others I’ve just come across recently. If you have a cool one — or a suggestion for a new use of big data within the healthcare space — share it in the comments:

Genomics. This is the epitomic case for big data and health care. Genome sequencing isgetting cheaper by the day and produces mountains of data. Companies such asDNAnexus, Bina Technologies, Appistry and NextBio want to make analyzing that data to discover cures for diseases faster, easier and cheaper than ever using lots cutting-edge algorithms and lots of cloud computing cores.
BI[definition of business intelligence] for doctors. Doctors and staff at Seattle Children’s Hospital are using Tableau to analyze and visualize terabytes of data dispersed across the institution’s servers and databases. Not only does visualizing the data help reduce medical errors and help the hospital plan trials but, as of this time last year, its focus on data had saved the hospital $3 million on supply chain costs….
..Semantic search. Imagine you’re a doctor trying to learn about a new patient or figure out who among your patients might benenfit from a new technique. But patient records have been scattered throughout departments, vary in format and, perhaps worst of all, all use the ontologies of the department that created the record. A startup called Apixio is trying to fix this by centralizing records in the cloud and applying semantic analysis to uncover everything doctors need, regardless who wrote it…
..Getting ahead of disease. It’s always good if you figure out how to diagnose diseases early without expensive tests, and that’s just what Seton Healthcare was able to dothanks to its big data efforts…
and more!
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July 17, 2012 Posted by | health care, Medical and Health Research News | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Your care is fragmented, here’s how to fix it

From the 4 April 2011 post by BARBARA BRONSON GRAY, RN at KevinMD.com

…The more complicated your problems, the more fragmented your care will be. The average Medicare patient sees two physicians and five specialists a year, (according to The Fragmentation of American Health Care: Cases and Solutions, edited by Einer Elhage). Those with a chronic illness see an average of 13 physicians a year. A Medicare patient with coronary artery disease sees ten physicians in six distinct practices annually. Indeed, the more physicians following someone after a heart attack, the lower the survival rates.

It’s important you know that there is no little Tinkerbell picking up your medical records and automatically delivering them to the physicians in your life who should know what’s happening with you. Consider yourself the the person most responsible to collect written updates, copies of test results and lists of new and changed medications and get them to all your other healthcare providers.

What can you do?

When you get a test result, procedure or have surgery, get the summary in writing, keep a copy, and send or bring copies to all your other healthcare providers. Attach a simple note: “Wanted to keep you up- to-date on my health status. Please put this in my chart.” If it’s an important healthcare issue, be sure to bring up the data or  problem at your next visit and mention that you sent a written summary for inclusion in your medical record.
Keep a list of all your medications and update it any time a healthcare provider adds or deletes a drug or changes a dosage. Bring a copy of that list to your medical appointments and to the emergency room if you end up there.
Don’t leave your dentist or your optometrist/ophthalmologist out of the loop. They need to know the details of your general health status. It will help them diagnose and treat any issues they may identify with you. Be sure they know if you have any infections, immune issues, heart problems, chronic conditions or are taking blood thinners or antibiotics, as well as other medications.
If you have a test or procedure and you do not hear the results soon afterwards, do not assume the results were normal. Call the healthcare provider who ordered the test and ask the office staff to email or send you a written copy of the test summary. Keep a copy in your own “medical updates” file. If the test was indeed OK, you still should have copy for reference at a later time, if needed.

If you or someone you love ends up in the hospital, your role of communicator will be even more vital. Often multiple consulting physicians — specialists — are called by the admitting physician to weigh in on issues and questions that develop while you’re in the hospital. They don’t always talk to each other or even realize who has changed or added a medication, who has ordered a test, or what results are in. The more you communicate the better. If you are being asked to go back for a test you already had or if you have questions about what is happening, don’t assume someone at the “nurses’ station” has it all managed. Ask questions and be sure you understand what tests you’re getting and why. If you are being discharged from the hospital ask for the results of any tests or procedures you had in the hospital.

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April 7, 2012 Posted by | health care | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

   

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