Highlight HEALTH Goes Mobile

As more and more people use cell phones, the Mobile Web — accessing the World Wide Web using a mobile device such as a cell phone, PDA or other portable device — is increasingly being used to access online information. According to AdMob, the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace, in August 2008 mobile worldwide traffic grew 12.8% to 5.1 billion web page requests [1].

New smartphones like the iPhone are accelerating this use in the mobile web. Indeed, in August 2008 the iPhone saw the largest share increase of any smartphone [1]. With healthcare consumers and professionals increasingly relying on handheld devices to access the web, I’m pleased to announce that a mobile version of Highlight HEALTH is now available.

Standard mobile phones, Blackberries and 3G devices such as the iPhone and iTouch are fully supported. Optimized for the mobile web, http://www.highlighthealth.com enables readers to access all the articles on Highlight HEALTH while on the go.

At the bottom of every article, you can show and post comments. Additionally, there are links to “Email” the full HTML article link, “Bookmark on delicious” or “Share on Twitter”.

UPDATE:

Highlight HEALTH now automatically detects mobile devices like iPhones, iPads, Android & Blackberry and more, and serves an optimized theme instead of the regular desktop theme. Visitors can always switch back to the desktop theme if they choose.

According to a study last year, 75% of people who access the mobile web conduct searches [2]. As consumers use the Internet more than any other media source to research health information [3], I anticipate an increasing number of health-related searches to be done using the mobile web. I hope the mobile version of Highlight HEALTH will enhance its appeal to readers who have busy schedules and frequently don’t have time to read on a computer.

Mobile web users, please give the mobile version of Highlight HEALTH a try and let me know what you think.

References

  1. AdMob Mobile Metrics Report. AdMob. 2008 August
  2. Consumers Stick with Big Search Engines, Demand Mobile Optimized Content. iCrossing press release. 2007 Apr 25.
  3. Research Reveals That Internet Has Become Primary Means by Which Consumers Access Health Information. WebMD press release. 2003 Feb 10.

Health Highlights – October 7th, 2008

Health Highlights is a biweekly summary of particularly interesting articles from credible sources of health and medical information that we follow & read. For a complete list of recommeded sources, see our links page.

Health Highlights

Health Highlights – August 5th, 2008

Health Highlights is a biweekly summary of particularly interesting articles from credible sources of health and medical information that we follow & read. For a complete list of recommeded sources, see our links page.

Health Highlights

Medicine 2.0 #27 – Communication is Key

Welcome to the twenty-seventh edition of Medicine 2.0, the bi-weekly blog carnival of the best posts pertaining to web 2.0 and medicine.

Medicine 2.0 is the science of maintaining and/or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis and treatment of patients utilizing web 2.0 internet-based services, including web-based community sites, blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, folksonomies (tagging) and Really Simple Syndication (RSS), to collaborate, exchange information and share knowledge. Physicians, nurses, medical students and health researchers who consume web media can actively participate in the creation and distribution of content, helping to customize information and technology for their own purposes.

Communication amongst and between healthcare professionals and healthcare consumers is a necessary element to improve health and is critical for the delivery of optimal medical outcomes.

This edition of Medicine 2.0 covers a wide array of posts with one thing in common — Communication.

Web 2.0 Tools and Slideshows

Medicine 2.0

Gunther Eysenbach’s Random Research Rants

Dr. Gunther Eysenbach presents an archiving system for Citing Blogs, Preserving Cited Webpages etc with WebCite.

Clinical Cases and Images

Do you Twitter? Dr. Ves Dimov offers A Doctor’s Opinion: Why I Started Microblogging on Twitter.

Scienceroll

23andMe presented a slideshow recently in Second Life in the latest session of the Scifoo Lives On series. Dr. Bertalan Mesko covers 23andMe in Second Life: LIVE.

Jay Parkinson+ MD + MPH

Dr. Jay Parkinson asks us to Look, posting a presentation from George Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente, about health reform.

Pharma 2.0

Bunny Ellerin writes about Within3 and the results of a survey at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conference. There’s no doubt that social media is Changing Physician Behavior.

Online Video

Gene Sherpas: Personalized Medicine and You

Dr. Steve Murphy writes about the upcoming second Helix Health CliniCast on genetic testing, genomic medicine and the science of accurate warfarin dosing, asking How’s that for Genomic Medicine by Press Release?

Digital Pathology Blog

The Digital Pathology Blog reports that Mayo Launches YouTube Channel with videos highlighting the latest research and treatment advances at Mayo Clinic.

WSJ Health Blog

The Wall Street Journal Health Blog discusses online doctor consults, announcing that The Doctor Will See You on the Webcam Now.

Information Tools and Tests

College@Home

Many of us might forget there’s other search tools out there besides Google. Laura Milligan provides a comprehensive list of 100 Useful Niche Search Engines You’ve Never Heard Of.

davidrothman.net

David Rothman posts An Evaluation of the Five Most Used Evidence Based Bedside Information Tools in Canadian Health Libraries, a recent study published in the journal Evidence Based Library and Information Practice.

Medgadget

Personalized Medical Search Engine: With Medgadget describes the inclusion of Medgadget in Scienceroll Search, a personalized medical search engine powered by Polymeta.com.

NursingDegree.Net

Jessica Merritt highlights a number of ways to use Google’s Personal Health Record (PHR), offering The Ultimate Guide to Google Health: 60+ Tips and Resources.

Canadian EMR

Digital records and privacy can be a mixed bag. Alan Brookstone reposts the media report UK Health Agency Loses 31,000 Patients Records.

Sharp Brains

Alvaro Fernandez writes about the Brain Age, Posit Science, and Brain Training Topics, reporting both good and bad news regarding the assessment and training of cognitive skills.

Microarray Blog

Albin Paul discusses the options for a Semantic Search Engine for PubMed — Microsoft Vs Yahoo Vs Google Vs Oracle in Semantic Web Search.

Tomographyblog

András Székely discusses TomographyBlogSearch in the Making, describing the SeekRadiology Project, a search engine for diagnostic imaging.

Doctor-patient Communication

Canadian Medicine

Graham Lanktree reviews a study of prepared patients and internet information, which finds that the Web Buoys Doctor-patient Communication.

Medical Economics

Gail Garfinkel Weiss writes how the shift from authority-based medicine to one of shared responsibility is playing out in the exam room in The New Doctor-patient Paradigm.

The iPhone

Dr Penna

Dr. Sreeram Penna provides a list of health care applications currently available for the iPhone in Mobile Medical Software for the Iphone 3g.

Efficient MD

Dr. Joshua Schwimmer also writes about potential applications on the iPhone for doctors in The New 3G iPhone, the App Store, and Doctors.

Conclusion

That concludes the 27th edition of Medicine 2.0. My thanks to everyone who submitted an article. You can find more information about the carnival as well as the hosting schedule and past editions at the Medicine 2.0 Website.

Have you written a blog post about web 2.0 and medicine? Submit it to the next edition of Medicine 2.0 using the carnival submission form.

YouTube as a Source of Health Misinformation

social network
The Internet is rapidly transforming healthcare. Not only is it creating new connections for the access, sharing and exchange of information, it is cultivating a new level of knowledge among patients, enabling them to have input into decisions about their healthcare. Indeed, 80% of adult Americans say they have researched at least one specific health topic, either information on exercise and fitness, or information about immunizations or vaccines, online at some point [1]. A 2003 WebMD study found that consumers spent more time researching health information online than any other media source [2].

Unfortunately, with all the reliable health information online, an equal or greater amount of misinformation also exists. An article in the Economist last year discussed the exponential increase in user-generated content, encouraged by sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia, and its affect on healthcare [3]. The article concluded by quoting a professor at Harvard Medical School:

Many doctors, he says, “don’t get the wisdom of crowds.” But he thinks the combined knowledge of a crowd of his patients would be far greater than his own.

However, the trouble with “The Wisdom of Crowds” or “Crowdsourcing” is that a group of people connected by a network doesn’t necessarily mean they will work together as or more effectively than in traditional organizations.

… Quite simply, not all crowds are wise.

In his book “The Wisdom of Crowds”, James Surowiecki wrote the following [4]:

The smartest groups are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence doesn’t imply rationality or impartiality. You can be biased and irrational, but as long as you’re independent, you won’t make the group any dumber.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association examined “The Wisdom of Crowds” by evaluating YouTube as a source of information on immunization [5]. University of Toronto researchers searched YouTube using the keywords “vaccination” and “immunization”, and measured users interaction with the videos using view counts and viewer reviews indicated by the star-rating system. Scientists evaluated 153 videos:

  • 73 (48%) of the videos were positive, meaning the central message of the video supported immunization (e.g. described the benefits and safety of immunizing, described immunization as a social good, or encouraged people to receive immunizations).
  • 49 (32%) of the videos were negative, meaning the central message of the video portrayed immunization negatively (e.g. emphasized the risk of immunization, advocated against immunizing, promoted distrust in vaccine science, made allegations of conspiracy or collusion between supporters of vaccination and manufacturers).
  • 31 (20%) of the videos were ambiguous, meaning the video contained either a debate or was ambivalent.

Although almost half the videos were positive and only 20% were negative, compared with positive videos, negative videos were more likely to receive a rating, had a higher mean star rating and more views.

The videos were then rated for scientific accuracy based on the 2006 Canadian Immunization Guide, which has recommendations similar to those from the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. None of the positive videos contradicted the Guide. However, nearly half of the negative videos (22 of 49; 45%) carried messages that did contradict the Guide. These included messages that general childhood immunization can cause autism and that scentific research supports the link between thimerosal and autism. However, perhaps the most striking data from the study was that, among the positive videos, public service announcements received the lowest mean ratings and the fewest views.

The authors comment at the end of the study that:

The video ratings and view counts suggest the presence of a community of YouTube users critical of immunization.

And that community of YouTube users is growing rapidly. According to a December 2007 report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the typical share of internet users going to video sites was nearly twice as large as it was in December 2006 [6].

With the pervasiveness of blogs and RSS on the Internet today, content has become a commodity. Indeed, “information overload” tends to be everywhere. With too much information and not enough time, capturing an audience’s attention is paramount. Everyone has heard the cliché: “Content is King”. In the age of Web 2.0 and YouTube, packaging, not content, has clearly become King. This is the message public health authorities and others trying to communicate accurate health information need to pay attention to: it’s not just what you say, it’s how it’s presented.

References

  1. Fox S and Fallows D. Internet Health Resources: Health searches and email have become more commonplace, but there is room for improvement in searches and overall Internet access. Pew Internet & American Life Project. 2003 July 16.
  2. Research Reveals That Internet Has Become Primary Means by Which Consumers Access Health Information. WebMD press release. 2003 Feb 10.
  3. Health 2.0. The Economist. 2007 Sep 6.
  4. Suroweicki J. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. Boston: Little, Brown, Boston.
  5. Keelan et al. YouTube as a source of information on immunization: a content analysis. JAMA. 2007 Dec 5;298(21):2482-4. DOI: 10.1001/jama.298.21.2482
    View abstract
  6. Rainie L. Increased Use of Video-sharing Sites. Pew Internet & American Life Project. 2008 Jan 9.