Lessons learned from evaluation of the use of the National electronic Library of Infection

Disease surveillance data sharing for public health: the next ethical frontiers

In the recent years, we have been witnessing a digital revolution in public and global health creating unprecedented opportunities for epidemic intelligence and public health emergencies. However, these opportunities created a double edge sword as access to data, quality monitoring and assurance, as well as governance and regulation frameworks for data privacy are lagging behind technological achievements.In this paper we identify three ethical challenges: sharing data across various early warning tools to support risk assessment. Secondly, define the challenges to be addressed by the legal frameworks for public health data sharing to unlock the potential of population-level datasets for research with no impact on citizens privacy. The third challenge lies with stricter regulation of the IT industry with regards to manipulating user data - such an initiative, GDPR, comes to force in the EU in May 2018.

Major infection events over 5 years: how is media coverage influencing online information needs of health care professionals and the public?

BACKGROUND

The last decade witnessed turbulent events in public health. Emerging infections, increase of antimicrobial resistance, deliberately released threats and ongoing battles with common illnesses were amplified by the spread of disease through increased international travel. The Internet has dramatically changed the availability of information about outbreaks; however, little research has been done in comparing the online behavior of public and professionals around the same events and the effect of media coverage of outbreaks on information needs.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate professional and public online information needs around major infection outbreaks and correlate these with media coverage. Questions include (1) How do health care professionals' online needs for public health and infection control information differ from those of the public?, (2) Does dramatic media coverage of outbreaks contribute to the information needs among the public?, and (3) How do incidents of diseases and major policy events relate to the information needs of professionals?

METHODS

We used three longitudinal time-based datasets from mid-2006 until end of 2010: (1) a unique record of professional online behavior on UK infection portals: National electronic Library of Infection and National Resource of Infection Control (NeLI/NRIC), (2) equivalent public online information needs (Google Trends), and (3) relevant media coverage (LexisNexis). Analysis of NeLI/NRIC logs identified the highest interest around six major infectious diseases: Clostridium difficile (C difficile)/Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), tuberculosis, meningitis, norovirus, and influenza. After pre-processing, the datasets were analyzed and triangulated with each other.

RESULTS

Public information needs were more static, following the actual disease occurrence less than those of professionals, whose needs increase with public health events (eg, MRSA/C difficile) and the release of major national policies or important documents. Media coverage of events resulted in major public interest (eg, the 2007/2008 UK outbreak of C difficile/MRSA). An exception was norovirus, showing a seasonal pattern for both public and professionals, which matched the periodic disease occurrence. Meningitis was a clear example of a disease with heightened media coverage tending to focus on individual and celebrity cases. Influenza was a major concern during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak creating massive public interest in line with the spring and autumn peaks in cases; although in autumn 2009, there was no corresponding increase in media coverage. Online resources play an increasing role in fulfilling professionals' and public information needs.

CONCLUSIONS

Significant factors related to a surge of professional interest around a disease were typically key publications and major policy changes. Public interests seem more static and correlate with media influence but to a lesser extent than expected. The only exception was norovirus, exhibiting online public and professional interest correlating with seasonal occurrences of the disease. Public health agencies with responsibility for risk communication of public health events, in particular during outbreaks and emergencies, need to collaborate with media in order to ensure the coverage is high quality and evidence-based, while professionals' information needs remain mainly fulfilled by online open access to key resources.

Understanding PubMed user search behavior through log analysis

This article reports on a detailed investigation of PubMed users’ needs and behavior as a step toward improving biomedical information retrieval. PubMed is providing free service to researchers with access to more than 19 million citations for biomedical articles from MEDLINE and life science journals. It is accessed by millions of users each day. Efficient search tools are crucial for biomedical researchers to keep abreast of the biomedical literature relating to their own research. This study provides insight into PubMed users’ needs and their behavior. This investigation was conducted through the analysis of one month of log data, consisting of more than 23 million user sessions and more than 58 million user queries. Multiple aspects of users’ interactions with PubMed are characterized in detail with evidence from these logs. Despite having many features in common with general Web searches, biomedical information searches have unique characteristics that are made evident in this study. PubMed users are more persistent in seeking information and they reformulate queries often. The three most frequent types of search are search by author name, search by gene/protein, and search by disease. Use of abbreviation in queries is very frequent. Factors such as result set size influence users’ decisions. Analysis of characteristics such as these plays a critical role in identifying users’ information needs and their search habits. In turn, such an analysis also provides useful insight for improving biomedical information retrieval.

Database URL:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed