Health Information Accessibility

[Title]

[Name of Student]

[Name of College/University]

Introduction

To manage their care, healthcare consumers have been becoming more active by turning to the Internet for acquiring health information. The Internet can possibly serve as a powerful tool for the distribution of patient information by growing communication between patients and their healthcare providers. However, at the same for an inexperienced searcher, the Internet can be misleading and frustrating. Most of the information is developed through the eyes of healthcare practitioners rather than patients ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"JUw79sh2","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Eysenbach 2000)","plainCitation":"(Eysenbach 2000)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":97,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/4cj2SgiL/items/IAHJEQGN"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/4cj2SgiL/items/IAHJEQGN"],"itemData":{"id":97,"type":"article-journal","title":"Consumer health informatics","container-title":"BMJ","page":"1713-1716","volume":"320","issue":"7251","source":"www.bmj.com","abstract":"Medical informatics has expanded rapidly over the past couple of years. After decades of development of information systems designed primarily for physicians and other healthcare managers and professionals, there is an increasing interest in reaching consumers and patients directly through computers and telecommunications systems. Consumer health informatics is the branch of medical informatics that analyses consumers' needs for information; studies and implements methods of making information accessible to consumers; and models and integrates consumers' preferences into medical information systems. Consumer informatics stands at the crossroads of other disciplines, such as nursing informatics, public health, health promotion, health education, library science, and communication science, and is perhaps the most challenging and rapidly expanding field in medical informatics; it is paving the way for health care in the information age.\n\nThis non-exhaustive review focuses on topics from the field of consumer health informatics because there has been a markedly increased interest in this field (additional information is available on the BMJ 's website). Medline was searched using the terms “consumer” and “informatics.” The proceedings of the American Medical Informatics Association's symposiums (1998 and 1999) and the proceedings of the ninth World Congress on Medical Informatics (Medinfo 1998) were hand searched. The AltaVista search engine was used to retrieve information from the internet, using the search string “+definition + consumer health informatics” to find unpublished reports.1–3\n\nMedical informatics is “the field that concerns itself with the cognitive, information processing, and communication tasks of medical practice, education, and research.” 4 Until recently medical informatics focused on developing applications for health professionals: medical informaticians looked at medical practice mainly through the eyes of health professionals rather than through the eyes of patients. Ten years ago Greenes and Shortliffe wrote: “After many years of development of information systems to support the infrastructure of …","URL":"https://www.bmj.com/content/320/7251/1713","DOI":"10.1136/bmj.320.7251.1713","ISSN":"0959-8138, 1468-5833","note":"PMID: 10864552","journalAbbreviation":"BMJ","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Eysenbach","given":"Gunther"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2000",6,24]]},"accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",5,16]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Eysenbach 2000). Currently, the public, in general, has complete options for receiving information through Mobile Applications and a wide range of websites. A number of healthcare providers have been using these Apps for keeping their patients informed about the future course of actions. In this regard, WebMD and MEDLINE, are prevalent in electronic healthcare resources.

Discussion

In the healthcare care field, WebMD is the most utilized mobile application in the US and has been dominating Google search engine for medical questions. However, electronic information resources may not provide correct answers every time while at some places the correct answer becomes incorrect ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"TQcxBoFq","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(McKibbon and Fridsma 2006)","plainCitation":"(McKibbon and Fridsma 2006)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":100,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/4cj2SgiL/items/LSWYCU2X"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/4cj2SgiL/items/LSWYCU2X"],"itemData":{"id":100,"type":"article-journal","title":"Effectiveness of Clinician-selected Electronic Information Resources for Answering Primary Care Physicians' Information Needs","container-title":"Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association","page":"653-659","volume":"13","issue":"6","source":"academic.oup.com","abstract":"Abstract. Objective: To determine if clinician-selected electronic information resources improve primary care physicians' abilities to answer simulated clinica","URL":"https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article/13/6/653/736386","DOI":"10.1197/jamia.M2087","ISSN":"1067-5027","journalAbbreviation":"J Am Med Inform Assoc","language":"en","author":[{"family":"McKibbon","given":"K. Ann"},{"family":"Fridsma","given":"Douglas B."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2006",11,1]]},"accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",5,16]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (McKibbon and Fridsma 2006). WebMD, as per its editorial policy has promised to empower healthcare providers and patients with accurate, trustworthy and objective health information. In addition, it tries to ensure that its relevancy and practicality of source for medicine and health sciences rather than filtering certain kind of that is not appropriate to an individual's health, it provides a variety of information on health. They have clinical significance with peer-reviewed medical journals for example Circulation, Diabetes Care, Pediatrics, The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and many others. There have been searching trends which depend on seasonal interests for example “Cold and Flu”, “Allergy Seasons”, and “Summer Safety. While they have a clear difference between news, reference, and features.

MEDLINE is the US-based premier bibliographic database on life science, particularly on biomedicine and comprises of more than 25 million references to journal articles. MEDLINE records are indexed with Medical Subject Headings (NeSH) and that makes it different from other resources. While it the online counterpart to MEDLARS, established in 1964 and a significant number of journals have been selected from DEDLINE. While some journals are selected on the bases of NLM-initiated reviews such as toxicology and environmental health, AIDS, health service research, and history of medicine are the distinctive priorities of NIH and NLM components. Generally, these reviews include consultations and some external expertise. The publications are included from 1966 to present and some pre-1966 citations. Presently, the citations include 5,200 global journals with forty languages. MEDLINE’s subject scope is health and biomedicine approximately explained to include those areas of life science, bioengineering, chemical sciences, and behavioral sciences. In addition, it covers life sciences vibrant to educators, researchers and biomedical practitioners along with aspects of plant and animal sciences, marine biology, environmental science, and biology. There are also scholarly journals including a small number of newsletters, magazines, and newspapers.

Conclusion

The Internet will continue to have a deep impact on the people, librarians, and healthcare providers. However, each of the healthcare resources includes a variety of implications for patients. For example, the authors provide suggestions for formulating a search strategy and consulting with their healthcare providers prior to its use. While the information provided by the databases may be confusing to the people in common as they suggest a consultation with different systems before settling their way on MEDLINE ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"lR7rXjlP","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Hollander 2000)","plainCitation":"(Hollander 2000)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":94,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/4cj2SgiL/items/3FJ4KRZN"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/4cj2SgiL/items/3FJ4KRZN"],"itemData":{"id":94,"type":"article-journal","title":"Health Care Resources on the Internet: A Guide for Librarians and Health Care Consumers.","container-title":"Bulletin of the Medical Library Association","page":"397-400","volume":"88","issue":"4","source":"PubMed Central","URL":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC35264/","ISSN":"0025-7338","note":"PMID: null\nPMCID: PMC35264","title-short":"Health Care Resources on the Internet","journalAbbreviation":"Bull Med Libr Assoc","author":[{"family":"Hollander","given":"Sue"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2000",10]]},"accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",5,16]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Hollander 2000). Though, the resources provide a better starting point to the healthcare practitioners and patients with much focus on updated and focused information. Whereas many of these databases are maintained by federal agencies and international organizations.

References

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Eysenbach, Gunther. 2000. “Consumer Health Informatics.” BMJ 320(7251): 1713–16. https://www.bmj.com/content/320/7251/1713 (May 16, 2019).

Hollander, Sue. 2000. “Health Care Resources on the Internet: A Guide for Librarians and Health Care Consumers.” Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 88(4): 397–400. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC35264/ (May 16, 2019).

McKibbon, K. Ann, and Douglas B. Fridsma. 2006. “Effectiveness of Clinician-Selected Electronic Information Resources for Answering Primary Care Physicians’ Information Needs.” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 13(6): 653–59. https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article/13/6/653/736386 (May 16, 2019).