CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Yearb Med Inform 2021; 30(01): 210-218
DOI: 10.1055/s-0041-1726532
Section 7: Consumer Health Informatics and Education
Synopsis

Consumer Informatics and COVID-19 Pandemics: Challenges and Opportunities for Research

Findings from the Yearbook 2020 Section on Education and Consumer Health Informatics
Pascal Staccini
1   Département IRIS, URE RETINES, Faculté de Médecine, Université Côte d'Azur, France
,
Annie Y. S. Lau
2   Center for Health Informatics, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University, Australia
,
Section Editors for the IMIA Yearbook Section on Consumer Health Informatics › Author Affiliations

Summary

Objective: To summarise the state of the art during the year 2020 in consumer health informatics and education, with a special emphasis on “Managing Pandemics with Health Informatics - Successes and Challenges”.

Methods: We conducted a systematic search of articles published in PubMed using a predefined set of queries, which identified 147 potential articles for review. These articles were screened according to topic relevance and 15 were selected for consideration of best paper candidates, which were then presented to a panel of international experts for full paper review and scoring. The top five papers were discussed in a consensus meeting. Three papers received the highest score from the expert panel, and these papers were selected to be representative papers on consumer informatics for managing pandemics in the year 2020.

Results: Bibliometrics analysis conducted on words found in abstracts of the candidate papers revealed 4 clusters of articles, where the clustering outcomes explained 77.04% of the dispersion. The first cluster composed of articles related to the use of mobile apps for video consultation and telehealth during the pandemic. The second revealed studies reporting the lived experience of healthcare workers and patients during COVID-19. The third focused on ways people used the internet to seek for health information during the pandemic and the dissemination of fake news. The last cluster composed of articles reporting the use of social listening methods (e.g., via tweet hashtags) to explore the spread of the virus around the world.

Conclusions: The pandemic outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) constitutes a grave risk to the global community and sparks a significant increase in public interest and media coverage, especially on social media. Consumers are facing a new set of challenges that were not considered before COVID-19, often finding themselves in a world that is constantly changing—blended with facts and fake information—and unable to decide what to do next. Despite most people understanding the good will behind public health policies, one must not forget it is individuals we are supporting and that their personal circumstances may affect how they perceive and comply with these policies. Consumers more than ever need help to make sense of the uncertainty and their situation and we need to help them navigate the best option in a world that is constantly evolving.



Publication History

Article published online:
03 September 2021

© 2021. IMIA and Thieme. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Georg Thieme Verlag KG
Rüdigerstraße 14, 70469 Stuttgart, Germany

 
  • References

  • 1 Helft M. (November 11, 2008) Google uses searches to track flu's spread. NY Times. Accessed May 17, 2021 at www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/technology/internet/12flu.html?_r=0#
  • 2 Yang S, Santillana M, Koua SC. Accurate estimation of influenza epidemics using Google search data via ARGO. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2015 Nov 24; 112 (47) 14473-8
  • 3 Corsi A, de Souza FF, Pagani RN, Kovaleski JL. Big data analytics as a tool for fighting pandemics: a systematic review of literature. J Ambient Intell Humaniz Comput 2020; 1-18
  • 4 Ouzzani M, Hammady H, Fedorowicz Z, Elmagarmid A. Rayyan - a web and mobile app for systematic reviews. Syst Rev 2016; 5 (01) 210
  • 5 Aria M, Cuccurullo C. Bibliometrix: An R-tool for comprehensive science mapping analysis. Journal of Informetrics 2017; 11 (04) 959-75
  • 6 Callon M, Courtial JP, Laville F. Co-word analysis as a tool for describing the network of interactions between basic and technological research—the case of polymer chemistry. Scientometrics 1991; 22 (01) 155-205
  • 7 Sabırlı R, Karsli E, Canacik O, Ercin D, Çiftçi H, Sahin L. et al. Use of WhatsApp for Polyclinic Consultation of Suspected Patients With COVID-19: Retrospective Case Control Study. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2020; 8: e22874
  • 8 Xu H, Huang S, Qiu C, Liu S, Deng J, Jiao B. et al. Monitoring and Management of Home-Quarantined Patients With COVID-19 Using a WeChat-Based Telemedicine System: Retrospective Cohort Study. J Med Internet Res 2020; 22: e19514
  • 9 El-Awaisi A, O'Carroll V, Koraysh S, Koummich S, Huber M. Perceptions of who is in the healthcare team? A content analysis of social media posts during COVID-19 pandemic. J Interprof Care 2020; 34: 622-32
  • 10 Bennett P, Noble S, Johnston S, Jones D, Hunter R. COVID-19 confessions: a qualitative exploration of healthcare workers experiences of working with COVID-19. BMJ Open 2020; 10: e043949
  • 11 Hamlin M, Steingrimsson S, Cohen I, Bero V, Bar-Tl A, Adini B. Attitudes of the Public to Receiving Medical Care during Emergencies through Remote Physician-Patient Communications. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2020; 17 (14) 5236
  • 12 Xie B, Charness N, Fingerman K, Kaye J, Kim MT, Khurshid A. When Going Digital Becomes a Necessity: Ensuring Older Adults’ Needs for Information, Services, and Social Inclusion During COVID-19. J Aging Soc Policy 2020; 32: 460-70
  • 13 Picone M, Inoue S, DeFelice C, Naujokas MF, Sinrod J, Cruz VA. et al. Social Listening as a Rapid Approach to Collecting and Analyzing COVID-19 Symptoms and Disease Natural Histories Reported by Large Numbers of Individuals. Popul Health Manag 2020; 23: 350-60
  • 14 Ali SH, Foreman J, Tozan Y, Capasso A, Jones AM, DiClemente RJ. Trends and Predictors of COVID-19 Information Sources and Their Relationship With Knowledge and Beliefs Related to the Pandemic: Nationwide Cross-Sectional Study. JMIR Public Health Surveill 2020; 6 (04) e21071
  • 15 Zhao X, Fan J, Basnyat I, Hu B. Online Health Information Seeking Using “#COVID-19 Patient Seeking Help” on Weibo in Wuhan, China: Descriptive Study. J Med Internet Res 2020; 22 (10) e22910
  • 16 Li X, Liu Q. Social Media Use, eHealth Literacy, Disease Knowledge, and Preventive Behaviors in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-Sectional Study on Chinese Netizens. J Med Internet Res 2020; 22 (10) e19684
  • 17 Brar Prayaga R, Prayaga RS. Mobile Fotonovelas Within a Text Message Outreach: An Innovative Tool to Build Health Literacy and Influence Behaviors in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2020; 8 (08) e19529
  • 18 Dutta A, Beriwal N, Van Breugel LM, Sachdeva S, Barman B, Saikia H. et al. YouTube as a Source of Medical and Epidemiological Information During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study of Content Across Six Languages Around the Globe. Cureus 2020; 12 (06) e8622
  • 19 Moscadelli A, Albora G, Biamonte MA, Giorgetti D, Innocenzio M, Paoli S. et al. Fake News and Covid-19 in Italy: Results of a Quantitative Observational Study. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2020; 17 (16) 5850
  • 20 Massaad E, Cherfan P. Social Media Data Analytics on Telehealth During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Cureus 2020; 12 (04) e7838
  • 21 Pobiruchin M, Zowalla R, Wiesner M. Temporal and Location Variations, and Link Categories for the Dissemination of COVID-19-Related Information on Twitter During the SARS-CoV-2 Outbreak in Europe: Infoveillance Study. J Med Internet Res 2020; 22 (08) e19629