davidrothman.net

Francesca Frati (who rules) pointed out last week a site produced by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow: http://behindthemedicalheadlines.com/.

Craig Stoltz (previously mentioned) dropped me an email to point out a post I’d missed from The Health Care Blog by Alicia White of Bazian (the company which evaluates stories for the NHS’s Behind the Headlines service).

Says Ms. White:

…we’ve developed the following questions to help you figure out which articles you’re going to believe, and which you’re not.

Questions include:

• Does the article support its claims with scientific research?
• Is the article based on a conference abstract?
• Was the research in humans?
• How many people did the research study include?
• Did the study have a control group?
• Who paid for and conducted the study?
• Did the study actually assess what’s in the headline?
• How can I find out more?

Good stuff. Go read it.

Thanks again for the pointers, Francesca and Craig!

February 3rd, 2009 | Category: Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Information Literacy | Comments (3)

A recent article in the Journal of Rheumatology:

“Trying to Measure the Quality of Health Information on the Internet: Is It Time to Move On?” [html] | [PDF]

Short answer:

Hell, no.

Longer answer:

Says the article:

“The natural assumption is to believe that there exists a link between the quality of information on the Internet and harm. However, a systematic review attempting to evaluate the number and characteristics of reported cases of harm in the peer-review literature determined that for a variety of reasons, there was little evidence to support this notion.”

It is impossible to quantify why people make bad decisions. For instance, say someone makes foolish financial decisions and loses everything they own: can it be determined if these bad decisions were made based on information they found online?

On the other hand, ask anyone you know who works in an Emergency Room if they’ve seen people who have done harm to themselves with a self-diagnosis or self-treatment based on something they read online. Every one of them will confirm they have. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the information found online, but knowing as we do that people increasingly make decisions about their health that are informed by information they find online, we don’t need evidence to assume, a priori and with confidence, that bad information can lead to harm. It is common sense for everyone in the health community to promote/produce good online information resources and discourage the existence/use of bad online information resources. Most importantly, we must help both health professionals and patients gain the information and health literacy skills to tell the good from the bad.

Authors Deshpande and Jadad argue that the evaluation tools for Web sites suffer…

“…from several limitations, which, in addition to those mentioned by the authors, include uncertain levels of usability, reliability, and validity.”

I won’t argue with that. I don’t think any single evaluation tool can let someone without information literacy skills determine the quality of information found online. I don’t think that even a vast arsenal of such evaluation tools will do the trick.

The authors have questions I’ll answer (I don’t care that the questions were intended to be rhetorical- they need to be answered):

“Will we ever develop an ideal tool that allows individuals to assess the quality of health information?”

Nope. We’ll also never invent a diagnostic tool that can replace a good physician’s experience and judgement- but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t create tools that help new doctors build these skills or help more experienced doctors flesh out their differential.

What are the determinants of this quality?

That’s a pretty broad question, but the MLA has a good basic guide of where to start.

“Is it possible to assess or measure quality?”

Medical librarians assess the quality of information every single day. So…yeah, it is.

“Even if possible, is the formal assessment of quality even necessary?”

Necessity depends on who the user is and what his/her particular information needs are.

“Does it even matter?”

Kind, encouraging teachers throughout the world often say that there’s no such thing as a stupid question. These extraordinarily compassionate educators are lying. Yes, it matters.

I’m a Web enthusiast who sees a lot of value in lots of online collaborative efforts. There are absolutely places and uses for the wisdom of the crowd- but to hear some people talk about apomediation, you’d think the wisdom of the crowd could replace the judgement of experts.

“For example, Internet users could provide ratings or recommendations based on their own experiences to judge the quality and relevance of health information.”

Huh. So if we’re just gonna’ go with what a crowd of self-selecting amateurs agree upon, I guess we don’t need double blind trials any more, either? We’ll just ask a crowd their opinion. Who needs empiricism? Science, schmience. Why should we take this article more seriously because the authors have two MDs and dotorate between them? I’m not Andrew Keen¹, but neither am I an irrational technotopian.

“Analogous to the peer-review process, aggregation of ratings from many individuals (a form of crowdsourcing) allows “good” information to be highlighted prominently, while “not so good” information gets pushed to the bottom.”

That’s a terrible analogy. In the peer-review process, both the author(s) and the reviewer(s) are credentialed experts in their field. I would not ask a room full of neurologists for advice on my house’s plumbing and I would not ask a room full of plumbers about the treatment of peripheral neuropathy. For the “Digg” model to work at all for health information, the crowd should be very large and very knowledgeable. On the other hand, even widely agreed-upon practices have later been proven wrong by empirical testing and evidence…so shouldn’t we rely on evidence?

The problem with relying only on the wisdom of crowds is that, sometimes, the crowd shows an alarming lack of wisdom regarding health information. Huckster snake-oil salesman Kevin Trudeau’s Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About was a New York Times self-help Best Seller! (For more on why this is a great example of an unwise crowd, see this video.)

Let me illustrate with a real life example: When our infant son developed what appeared to be a tremor, we didn’t waste time asking a crowd. We first asked a local pediatric neurologist for his opinion. When he was unable to make a diagnosis, we asked Dr. Marc Patterson, a pediatric neurologist at the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Patterson’s unusual experience and education enabled him to make a diagnosis very quickly.²

I wonder: If Drs. Deshpande and Jadad have family members with worrying illnesses, do they consult the best available clinical expert, or go to the wisdom of the crowd?

But I’m getting off-track. Back to the article.

As seems to be typical for malinformed physician technotopians, these authors point at Wikipedia to support their perspective.

“The interplay of users to collaborate and deal with information overload has already been proven successful in other areas outside the health space. For example, Wikipedia not only allows users to submit content on various topics, but also provides the capability for users to edit the content of others. Although there is the potential for misuse, Wikipedia, which relies on anonymous, unpaid volunteers, seems to be as accurate in covering scientific information as the Encyclopedia Britannica.”

Well, yeah. And I’d trust Wikipedia as a source for health information about as much as I’d trust Britannica….which is to say not very much.³

“Since its inception in 1990 until the present day, the health system has grappled with how to manage potential harm associated with information available on the Internet. Research in this area, for the most part, continues to assume that techniques used to evaluate paper-based information can automatically be applied to online resources, ignoring the added complexity created by the multiple media formats, players, and channels that are brought together by the Internet.”

Someone please explain to me why peer review is less effective with texts distributed online than texts distributed on artifacts of dead trees. Text is text. Someone please explain to me why peer review would be less effective if this text is read aloud and recorded/played online as video or audio (downloadable or streamed in any format). The “added complexity” the authors mention impacts peer review in no way. Perhaps this is why they make such an assertion while providing utterly no support for it.

I like Web technology and have made a nice niche for myself by writing and talking about how it can be useful to health information professionals. I am sick to death, however, of people attempting to make names for themselves with inane prognostication and unsupported technotopianism. When these authors write that “…as the Web continues to evolve, we will likely gain new insights as to how this happens along with a better understanding of how to handle health information from any source…”, I want to beat my head against a wall. To me, this is no different from saying we should go ahead and build lots more nuclear reactors because we have faith that technology will work out a way to dispose of nuclear waste in a safe manner before we are harmed by our inability to dispose of it properly. Such things are too important to take on faith in the future.

“The time has likely come to end our Byzantine discussions about whether and how to measure the quality of online health information. The public has moved on. It is time to join them in what promises to be an exciting voyage of human fellowship, with new discoveries and exciting ways to achieve optimal levels of health.”

Such a perspective would have us ally ourselves with the Jenny McCarthys of the world. Jenny McCarthy believes and popularizes the idea that immunizations cause autism spectrum disorders, despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence correlating immunizations and ASDs.

Laypeople, even brilliant laypeople, do not generally have the information or health literacy skills to know where to find quality information and to know what to trust. My brother is an experienced Web programmer. He has topped out every IQ test he has ever taken. He is a brilliant man and as talented an autodidact as anyone I know. Still, when he needed a medical procedure, he was able to find more information and trust its authority by conferring with me- because I spend my days finding and evaluating health information.

Reliance on science and expertise is not Byzantine. Rationalism is not Byzantine. Empiricism is not Byzantine. Politicians should not make public policy decisions based on polls and clinicians should not make decisions based on the misinformed preferences of their patients. Clinicians have a duty to educate patients and help point them towards good information because the volume of shoddy information is growing at an alarming rate.

January 20th, 2009 | Category: Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Information Literacy | Comments (9)

Well, I was pretty hard on Dean Giustini’s BMJ Editorial.

I have believed in the value of the dialectical process since long before I knew there was a term for it and have always believed that honest criticism serves the criticized, the critic, and those witnessing the process.

So I LOVE that Dean decided to specifically address one of my criticisms.

I questioned Dean’s assertion that “Google’s search results are emblematic of an approaching crisis with information overload”.

Dean writes:

Google most certainly is emblematic (a visible symbol) of information overload, and in fact is the information specialist’s laboratory for it.

I see honest disagreement here.

I think Google is emblematic of the way that the clever application of technology overcomes “information overload.” The Web is huge, filled with an insane amount of information that is varyingly good, bad, ugly or [fill in your favorite adjective here]. But if one uses Google to search for Google Scholar Dean, the first four results are about Dean Giustini, the author of the UBC Google Scholar Blog. It took typing three words and I found EXACTLY what I was looking for in about 0.51 seconds. To me, this doesn’t paint an image of Google as a symbol of information overload.

Dean continues:

“It’s well-documented throughout the blogosphere that web 2.0 has resulted in too many RSS feeds, too much data and information from disparate sources with little connection to each other.”

First, there are many popular positions (technical, political, philosophical…) expressed in the blogosphere (and elsewhere) that I believe to be wrong-headed, foolish, unwise or silly. I also believe that decisions based on evidence and direct experience tend to get better results than those built on blogosphere buzz and hearsay.

Second, I’m sincerely flabbergasted to hear a librarian (or any information professional) complain that there is “too much data” or “too many RSS feeds”.

“Web 2.0″ doesn’t cause an information glut. What causes an information glut is being an information glutton, taking on more than anyone can reasonably manage. There aren’t too many RSS feeds. Rather, there are users who subscribe to too many RSS feeds. The solution isn’t for less data to exist, the solution is smarter, more selective use of the data. The tools that help us filter and manage the information that we care most about are continuing to improve in power and sophistication.

The feeds I subscribe to are so carefully chosen and filtered that I started to worry about missing out on serendipitous discovery of information I didn’t know I needed. I remedied this by using feeds from the social bookmarking of medical librarians (and other beloved medical/technology information nerds) to keep an eye on what they find interesting. In this way, the tools that Dean sees as contributing to the “information glut” open me up to new ideas, thoughts, and resources that I would otherwise not have found. With the smart use of my aggregator, I can browse these quickly and easily, discarding what doesn’t suit my interests.

Dean also writes:

“99% of the information that we are finding in Google is irrelevant to medicine.”

Sure, but I’ve never heard a single physician claim Google is irrelevant to Medicine. On the contrary, many talk about how frequently they use it. Meanwhile, 99.99% of what’s findable via PubMed is irrelevant to a particular healthcare information need. So what?

Meanwhile, turnabout is absolutely fair play, and Dean reciprocates by sharing some criticism of my own writing. Because I’m really enjoying the direct discussion and believe in the dialectical process, I’m going to address each of his criticisms.

Dean writes:

“If you have some different ideas on where the web is, why don’t you write your own piece?”

I will absolutely be pleased to write an Op-Ed on the Web and health information at the invitation of the first prestigious medical journal which invites me to do so.

I’d might use the opportunity to demystify buzzwords, clear up popular misconceptions and/or call for a new sort of rigor in the way that writers in medicine and libraries use technology buzzwords in order to better empower each other and those whose needs they serve.

I could alternately suggest practical ways in which existing technologies could be leveraged to expand or improve information services for clinical patrons.

Dean writes:

“One thing about David’s blogging is that he doesn’t explore the social or cultural context for all the tools he introduces.”

That’s usually true. After all, I’m neither a sociologist nor a cultural anthropologist.

I usually talk about how Web tools might be applied in the setting of a medical library. That’s sort of what this blog is for- and I’ve said that from the very first post.

I run a hospital library and I solve problems that hospital-based users experience while using technology. I write about the things that interest me and that I think will interest others who do similar work and face similar problems. That’s what defines the general scope of this blog- and I’m happy with it.

Dean writes:

“It’s much harder to place information technologies in some context than it is to merely announce that you’ve found a new tool worth exploring.”

Although I really do think it is important and useful just to share the existence of tools that I think may be of interest or use to other medical libraryfolk, I often provide context. Some examples:

• The Future of the Hospital Librarian (Pure Op-Ed on the future of hospital librarianship)
• Misdiagnosed Cyberchondriasis (Taking apart a very stupid term that is increasingly popular in mainstream media)
• Veropedia: Like Wikipedia, Except Totally Lame (A review and critique)
• PogoFrog vs. the Dyson Vacuum Cleaner (A review and critique)
• Elsevier’s WiserWiki (A review and critique)
• Rating Medical Blogs (A review and critique)
• Social Search for Health Librarians (A review and critique)
• Disliking “Web 2.0″ and Hating “Web 3.0″¹

Both Dean and Dr. Ves Dimov (at Clinical Cases and Images) seem to think that I want to replace “Web 2.0″ with some other term.

Dr. Dimov writes:

David seems to suggest the alternative term “Web Geekery” which does not sound much better than “Web 2.0.”

I have at no time suggested that my complaints with the (mis)use of “Web 2.0″ would be solved by replacing it with ANY other term. “Web Geekery” is just the phrase I use to describe the stuff that interests me.²

I will point out, though, that not a single person has ever needed me to explain what I mean by “Web geekery.”

For the record, Ves- I don’t think there was anything wrong with your description of “Web 2.0 and Medicine” in 2005. You were talking about applying the trends O’Reilly described with “Web 2.0″ to the needs of medicine. Still, I dearly hope that many of the current uses of “2.0″, “3.0″ and (yes, really!) “Web 4.0″ will go away. The metaphor threatens to outgrow and eat what it was supposed to represent.

January 10th, 2008 | Category: "Library 2.0", "Social Software", Blogging, Information Literacy, Medical Librarianship Blogs, RSS/Feeds, Search, Technology | Comments (6)

(This is the last post of 2007.  I’m not addicted to blogging.  I mean it.  I can stop any time I want!)

MedlinePlus has a new page on Health Literacy with links to lots of good stuff.

December 21st, 2007 | Category: Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Information Literacy | Comments (4)

A video from Google.

Testimonials from real patients and physicians on how the Internet has helped them with their health care treatment and delivery.

Above: Embedded video. If you are reading this via your feed aggregator, you may need to visit the site itself to view.

What bothers me about this video is that “the internet” isn’t the best tool for ANY of the purposes mentioned in this video. There are better tools for finding quality health information than Google and “the internet.”

Also: What is “Health Think”? (See opening and closing titles)

October 5th, 2007 | Category: Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Information Literacy, Search, Technology | Comments Off

Erin McKean’s TED Talk on dictionaries is wonderful. She’s brilliant and funny and she expanded my vocabulary. Watch and enjoy.

More about McKean here and here.

Also be sure to check out McKean’s blog, Dictionary Evangelist.

September 4th, 2007 | Category: Fun, Information Literacy, Interfaces, Reference, Technology, Video | Comments Off

[soapbox]

On 7/21/2007, a Harris Poll was released which stated that in the last two years, the percentage of people who “have used the Internet to search for health-related information” has gone from 53% to 71%. This was based on a telephone poll of 1,010 adults between 7/10/07 and 7/16/07. The Harris report refers to these people as “cyberchondriacs.”

The media seems to love this story. BusinessWeek, ars technica and a ton of others have offered articles on it.

I think the study matters and merits coverage, but I object to the term “cyberchondriac.”

Managed care has resulted in physicians not being able to spend as much time educating patients at the same time patients are taking more responsibility for their healthcare decisions. The healthcare consumer who decides to do some research using the most powerful research tool the world has ever seen isn’t a hypochondriac. That consumer is taking responsibility for her healthcare and becoming informed.

Let us say that a patient is told that she had a kind of hypothyroidism. That patient goes to the bookstore and buys a book published under the name of Mayo (or Johns Hopkins or some other very reputable authority) on thyroid disorders. The patient reads the book and makes notes on questions she wants to ask her doctor when she goes in for her next office visit. This isn’t hypochondriasis. This is the sort of patient clinicians should treasure. A patient who self-educates and asks informed questions saves the time of clinicians.

Now let’s imagine that the same patient skips the book and instead searches Medline Plus for information about hypothyroidism, printing some pages out and making notes on questions she wants to ask her doctor when she goes in for her next office visit. This isn’t hypochondria either. This is the exact same behavior in a patient that clinicians should celebrate and encourage.

Hypochondriasis is a very real disorder. The hypochondriac doesn’t need an Internet connection to experience its awful symptoms.

If clinicians want to complain about patients who look up health information online with no regard to the authority of the information or the information provider, that’s fine. Those clinicians would do well to volunteer and donate to help improve outreach and information literacy programs in medical libraries. When the clinician encounters a patient who habitually looks for health information from poor sources, the clinician should refer the patient to the nearest medical library or at least point the patient towards Medline Plus.

I won’t be using the word “cyberchondriac” to describe people who seek health information online.

I won’t use it to describe hypochondriacs who look for health information online, either. It has a glib feel to it that doesn’t sit well with me when describing someone dealing with a disorder as awful as hypochondriasis.

[/soapbox]

August 3rd, 2007 | Category: Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Information Literacy, Library promotion, Search, Technology | Comments Off

Not new, but new to me.

The Newest Vital Sign is based on a nutrition label from an ice cream container. Patients are given the label and then asked 6 questions about how they would interpret and act on the information contained on the label.

Specifically, the patient is handed a copy of the nutrition label and then asked a series of 6 questions about it. Patients can and should retain the label so they can refer to it while answering questions. It is not necessary to give the patient time to review the label before asking the questions. Rather, they will review the label as they are asked and answer the questions.

The questions are asked orally and the responses recorded by a clinical staff member on a special score sheet, which contains the correct answers. Based on the number of correct responses, the health care provider can assess the patient’s health literacy level.

You can order yours here.

Yes, it is created by Pfizer- but they’ll send you a copy of the peer-review study of the Newest Vital Sign (or you can snag it yourself here).

More about NVS:

• MedScape article: Newest Vital Sign May Be an Effective Quick Screen for Health Literacy
• Pfizer’s promotional materials

[via BHIC]

May 18th, 2007 | Category: Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Information Literacy, Technology | Comments Off

The Krafty Librarian asked for suggestions on teaching MEDLINE and Ratcatcher answered with a number of thoughts on the topic.

Among other things, Ratcatcher mentions this great self-paced tutorial from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

May 11th, 2007 | Category: For Medical Libraryfolk, Information Literacy, Medical Librarianship Blogs, Search, Teaching/Training, Technology | Comments Off

Over at Women’s Health News, Rachel recently posted good advice and links on interpreting health research. There probably won’t be a lot new information here for a lot of medical librarians, but these would be gold for non-medical librarians. Resources like these could perhaps be pointed out every time a public librarian helps a patron find articles about health topics.

In case you missed it, Rachel has moved Women’s Health News to Wordpress.com, so be sure to bookmark it at its new home and to subscribe to its new feed.

April 2nd, 2007 | Category: Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Information Literacy | Comments Off

Health Literacy is appallingly low in the U.S.
The Birmingham News reports on the “silent health epidemic” created by low health literacy, and mentions the Joint Commission white paper, ’What Did the Doctor Say?:’ Improving Health Literacy to Protect Patient Safety.

Wikipedia appallingly popular for health information
In a study from Envision Solutions titled Diving Deeper Into Online Health Search, 87.5% of searches for health information via Google or Yahoo displayed user-generated content on the first page of results.

“Of UGM indexed by search engines, Wikipedia was the most frequently cited resource. This wiki was referenced on the first page in 63% of searches”

Wow.

I’d never recommend Wikipedia to a medical professional or for consumer healthcare information, but I’m genuinely urcertain if use of Wikipedia helps or hurts health literacy. My first guess is that the very act of attempting to look up information is an okay first step, even if I’d rather that the consumer click over to MedlinePlus than to Wikipedia. The trick is that it can’t the consumer’s last step.

Any thoughts?

The report from Envision Solutions is all about searching for health information online and “User-Generated Media” (UGM).

UGM was defined as:

o Weblogs

o Online bulletin boards (either links directly to bulletin board content or Websites where they were prominently displayed)

o Wikis

o Podcasts

o Other UGM (i.e., Websites with content developed by individuals such as patients and medical professionals)

I’m not confortable with this definition. Look at Women’s Health News. Here’s a blog that examines news on women’s health topics and summarizes or points readers towards information. But the blog is written by a health information professional, a degreed medical librarian employed by a reputable academic medical library. She is legitimately expert at finding and processing this sort of information. What makes her a “user” and not a “publisher”? The fact that she’s not motivated by profit and isn’t government-sponsored? Couldn’t one say the same about Open Access journals? Are OA journals “User-Generated Media,” or are they disqualified from this label by virtue of their peer reviewe processes?

(Please note: I’m not being a smart-alec, I’m really asking and hoping someone has a good answer for this question.)

Maybe I’m just annoyed by this definition because it fails to recognize that tools like blogs and other “social software” are blurring the line between creator and consumer, developer and user or publisher and reader. Also, traditional media producers and corporations now own and run blogs.

It is as though Envision is saying “blog” equals “amateur”. Sure, that’s often the case, but not always.

[Both items via Kevin MD]

February 26th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", Blogging, Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Information Literacy, Wikis | Comments Off

The Krafty Librarian (Michelle Kraft) cracked me up with her comments regarding the article on Google as a diagnostic tool I posted about the other day.

Michelle posted a link on her blog to audio that summed up her reaction (and that of many healthcare information professionals) to the assertion from the article on Google as a Diagnostic Tool that “[g]oogle is likely to be a useful aid in diagnosis too. It has the advantage of being easier to use and freely available on the internet.”

Press the play button on the flash player below to hear the audio:

(Link to audio)

Many knickers have been twisted in reaction to this article. For a sampling, check out the Rapid Responses at the BMJ site, or some of the postings to MEDLIB-L.

Let’s try to do a little knicker-untwisting.

In the Forbes article about the study, the study’s lead author is quoted as saying:

The most obvious drawback is believing everything one reads, therefore, doctors need to have skills in critical appraisal of stuff they find on the net.” Similarly, “patients doing a search should use common sense, so if something is too good to be true, then… Another potential drawback is self-diagnosis by patients. I don’t think search engines can ever replace a good clinician who has plenty of common sense.

Some points this brings to mind for me:

• Google is suggested as a tool for the clinician as an experienced professional pursuing a diagnosis in the context of her/his expert training.
• The authors acknowledge that both clinicians and healthcare consumers need information literacy skills, not just Google.
• The authors are focused on the use of Google as a diagnostic tool by clinicians, not by patients. Some in the popular media have been irresponsible in suggesting to readers that because Google can be useful to physicians in this manner, patients should do the same.

Here is a part of a very reasonable response that was posted to MEDLIB-L by Margaret Henderson:

…this study was specifically on looking for a diagnosis not conducting a thorough search for articles (as you would for EBM). Given that the other available tools for diagnosis are excessively expensive (note our recent discussions on Up To Date, FirstConsult, etc.) I can see that using Google as an option is a viable one for doctors with no access to these databases.

Whatever we think, it does impact the way we teach our patrons and provide reference.

Margaret’s last sentence is perhaps the most important I’ve seen in discussion on this topic. This article should help to underline for medical libraryfolk a couple of important points:

• Medical libraries need to do a heck of a lot more self-promotion to make sure that clinicians understand the tools and services available to them when faced with a difficult diagnosis.
• One of the reasons Google is so appealing to clinicians is because it is easy to access and easy to use. Medical libraries must do more to not only develop tools with easy-to-use interfaces, but to get these tools so thoroughly incorporated into the point-of-care that using them is actually quicker and easier than using Google.

Google isn’t the problem. The problem is that medical libraries are not evolving fast enough to keep up with our patrons’ needs and expectations.

November 12th, 2006 | Category: Information Literacy, Library promotion, Search, Technology | Comments (2)

Several bloggers have already posted today about the new study from the Pew Internet and American Life project, Online Health Search 2006, but Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion includes an interview with Susannah Fox, Associate Director at Pew, who says of the study:

The biggest surprise for me was the decreasing percentage of health seekers (internet users who look for health information online) to check the source and date of the medical advice – health information they find. Expert organizations like the Medical Library Association, URAC, Consumer WebWatch, and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services have been trying to publicize the importance of checking these quality indicators, but it seems clear that most internet users are not getting the message.

Just another indication of the growing need for information literacy education generally and health information literacy education specifically.

Direct link to report (PDF)

Two other articles about searching online for consumer health information caught my eye today:

Rocky Mountain News

Internet can’t cure all ills: Millions go to online sites for health news, advice, but experts urge caution

I’m alarmed and annoyed that the article lists the most heavily used health information web sites BEFORE listing web sites that are recommended by the MLA. Worse, the Rocky Mountain Times descibes the most heavily visited sites as “the “Top five health Web sites,” which could mislead the reader into thinking that these are the best when, in reality, they’re just the most frequently visited. This strikes me as irresponsible behavior by the newspaper.

The Greensboro News-Record

Patients seek health info on Web, but it isn’t always fresh

This article has a different take on the Pew study. Instead of focusing on the way that health information seekers fail to consider the source, it focuses on the way they fail to check how up-to-date the information is. It does this in the headline, it seems, because of the one paraphrase in the story from a medical librarian:

That’s fine as long as information is reliable and up-to-date, said medical librarian Julie Myrick at Moses Cone Health System in Greensboro.

So it sort of looks like this reporter missed the major points of the Pew study.

The author also spoke with a primary care physician, Dr. Gail Terrell.

…if patients research issues carefully and discuss them in detail with their physicians, the patient’s care will almost certainly be better and might also be cheaper, Terrell said.

Dr. Terrell relates a story about a patient who came into Terrell’s office witha preliminary diagnosis based on internet research:

“…she came in (for her annual physical) and said, ‘I’ve been looking on the Internet and I think I’ve got Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber syndrome,’ ” Terrell said. “I’d never heard of it, and I’m board-certified and not a dummy. But I read her description, and she was right on the mark.”

(…snip…)

The down side, she [Terrell] said, is that patients who have a lot of questions or suggestions stemming from online research can take longer to treat. That’s a problem in an era in which the health care industry is trying to keep costs down by becoming more efficient.

I appreciate that primary care physicians try to see a lot of patients in a short amount of time, but I find this a little exasperating. One’s primary care physician should welcome the patient’s questions and answer each of them patiently.

Just a little personal advice from someone who has met a lot of doctors: if your primary care physician doesn’t have time for your questions when you’re at an office visit, find another primary care physician.

October 30th, 2006 | Category: Consumer Health Info, Information Literacy, Technology | Comments (4)

Article from ars technica:

ETS [Educational Testing Service] has developed an ICT Literacy Assessment (test a demo version) that gives students short tasks (3-5 minutes, testing one particular skill) and long tasks (15 minutes, testing skills in combination) to complete on a computer. These include things like sifting through e-mail and developing accurate search queries for academic databases, along with other, more business-related projects.

Another group, the National Forum on Information Literacy, has just announced the creation of an “ICT Literary Policy Council” that will review the ETS exam and issue recommendations for “cut points.” These will be used to map exam scores to achievement levels, so that educators can determine “which students are proficient and which may need additional ICT literacy instruction or remediation.”

Read the article

October 30th, 2006 | Category: Information Literacy, Teaching/Training, Technology | Comments Off

Syracuse University is not only offering a course on Health Literacy, but they’ve announced it to S.U.’s LIS students:

HSHP is offering a new course in Spring 2007, HTS 311/600, HEALTH LITERACY, taught by Luvenia W. Cowart, Ed.D., RN, Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow and Associate Professor of Practice in the College.

The undergraduate course is class number 40063, HTW 311, M001, Health Literacy, 3 credits.
The graduate course class number is 40832, HTW 600, Selected Topics: Health Literacy, 3 credits.

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COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is designed to introduce the health literacy phenomenon and to explore the multi-layered links between health literacy, health outcomes, and health care disparities. Critique of current health literacy literature and research findings will be emphasized. Foundational to the course is developing an understanding of social, economical, and personal barriers experienced by adults with poor literacy. Course participants will learn strategies for assessing readability and suitability of writing and printed materials and for evaluating individual reading skills of adults. Ethics and socio-political structures that address health literacy will be explored.

It’s wonderful that they’re promoting the course to LIS students. Whether a student plans a career in public, school, or academic librarianship, this is essential knowledge and these are essential skills.

Many thanks to Dr. Luvenia W. Cowart for allowing me to reproduce her announcement.

October 19th, 2006 | Category: Consumer Health Info, Information Literacy, Library School | Comments Off

October 14th, 2006 | Category: Fun, Information Literacy, Technology | Comments Off

Wow, the NN/LM MCR news blog posted links today to two good reads:

Navigating Health: The Role of Health Literacy
Read this online PDF with a discussion on the importance and usefullness of health information. “Access to good, reliable information is the cornerstone of health literacy. Yet providing information,even good information, is often not enough. Somehow, we need to build in the right communications channels to make sure that health information translates into healthy behaviours.” http://www.ilcuk.org.uk/downloads/NavigatingHealth%20FINAL.pdf

What is Social Media eBook
What is social media? In this new free e-book from Spannerworks, you will learn about the components of social media including blogs, social networks, content communities, wikis, podcasts and mash-ups.

This is a great introduction to “social” media for a beginner. Get the PDF here.

October 10th, 2006 | Category: Consumer Health Info, Information Literacy, Technology | Comments (1)