Panos Balatsoukas

The Role of Social Network Technologies in Online Health Promotion: A Narrative Review of Theoretical and Empirical Factors Influencing Intervention Effectiveness

Background Social network technologies have become part of health education and wider health promotion—either by design or happenstance. Social support, peer pressure, and information sharing in online communities may affect health behaviors. If there are positive and sustained effects, then social network technologies could increase the effectiveness and efficiency of many public health campaigns. Social media alone, however, may be insufficient to promote health. Furthermore, there may be unintended and potentially harmful consequences of inaccurate or misleading health information. Given these uncertainties, there is a need to understand and synthesize the evidence base for the use of online social networking as part of health promoting interventions to inform future research and practice. Objective Our aim was to review the research on the integration of expert-led health promotion interventions with online social networking in order to determine the extent to which the complementary benefits of each are understood and used. We asked, in particular, (1) How is effectiveness being measured and what are the specific problems in effecting health behavior change?, and (2) To what extent is the designated role of social networking grounded in theory? Methods The narrative synthesis approach to literature review was used to analyze the existing evidence. We searched the indexed scientific literature using keywords associated with health promotion and social networking. The papers included were only those making substantial study of both social networking and health promotion—either reporting the results of the intervention or detailing evidence-based plans. General papers about social networking and health were not included. Results The search identified 162 potentially relevant documents after review of titles and abstracts. Of these, 42 satisfied the inclusion criteria after full-text review. Six studies described randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the effectiveness of online social networking within health promotion interventions. Most of the trials investigated the value of a “social networking condition” in general and did not identify specific features that might play a role in effectiveness. Issues about the usability and level of uptake of interventions were more common among pilot studies, while observational studies showed positive evidence about the role of social support. A total of 20 papers showed the use of theory in the design of interventions, but authors evaluated effectiveness in only 10 papers. Conclusions More research is needed in this area to understand the actual effect of social network technologies on health promotion. More RCTs of greater length need to be conducted taking into account contextual factors such as patient characteristics and types of a social network technology. Also, more evidence is needed regarding the actual usability of online social networking and how different interface design elements may help or hinder behavior change and engagement. Moreover, it is crucial to investigate further the effect of theory on the effectiveness of this type of technology for health promotion. Research is needed linking theoretical grounding with observation and analysis of health promotion in online networks.

Metadata for Big Data: A preliminary investigation of metadata quality issues in research data repositories

Data-driven approaches to scientific research have generated new types of repositories that provide scientists the means necessary to store, share and re-use big data-sets generated at various stages of the research process. As the number and heterogeneity of research data repositories increase, it becomes critical for scientists to solve data quality problems associated to the data-sets stored in these repositories. To date, several authors have been focused on the data quality issues associated to the data-sets stored in the repositories, yet there is little knowledge about the quality problems of the metadata used to describe these data-sets. Metadata is important for the long-term sustainability of research data repositories and data re-use. The aim of the research reported in this paper was to identify the data quality problems associated with the metadata used in the Dryad data repository. The paper concludes with some recommendations for improving the quality of metadata in research data repositories.

Interface design recommendations for computerised clinical audit and feedback: Hybrid usability evidence from a research-led system

Highlights • Presents a novel theoretically-informed computerised audit and feedback (e-A&F) system.• Identifies usability issues by employing an innovative hybrid inspection approach.• Translates findings into recommendations for the user-centred design of e-A&F systems.

Greek academic librarians' perceptions of the impact of Google on their role as information providers

The increased popularity of Google search engine in the daily routine in one’s workplace and in the academic information seeking process is undeniable. ‘Googling’ challenges the traditional skills of librarians as information providers and the role of library and information service provision in the digital era. This paper reports on the preliminary findings of a qualitative study investigating the perceptions of Greek academic librarians on the impact of Google and ‘Googling’ on their role as information providers in the digital era. To address the needs of this study a set of semi structured interviews was employed with library managers and librarians. The findings of this study revealed that Greek academic librarians use mainly Google Search for its easy information provision but advise on adequate training on Google sources evaluation before use. It was suggested that libraries need to support life-long learning, and enhance their services quality in order to survive. Additionally, IT and managerial skills acquisition seems to be vital. Research also revealed the essential role of LIS departments in the provision of life-long learning and the organisation of training programmes.

User Interface Requirements for Web-Based Integrated Care Pathways: Evidence from the Evaluation of an Online Care Pathway Investigation Tool

Integrated care pathways (ICPs) define a chronological sequence of steps, most commonly diagnostic or treatment, to be followed in providing care for patients. Care pathways help to ensure quality standards are met and to reduce variation in practice. Although research on the computerisation of ICP progresses, there is still little knowledge on what are the requirements for designing user-friendly and usable electronic care pathways, or how users (normally health care professionals) interact with interfaces that support design, analysis and visualisation of ICPs. The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to address this gap by evaluating the usability of a novel web-based tool called COCPIT (Collaborative Online Care Pathway Investigation Tool). COCPIT supports the design, analysis and visualisation of ICPs at the population level. In order to address the aim of this study, an evaluation methodology was designed based on heuristic evaluations and a mixed method usability test. The results showed that modular visualisation and direct manipulation of information related to the design and analysis of ICPs is useful for engaging and stimulating users. However, designers should pay attention to issues related to the visibility of the system status and the match between the system and the real world, especially in relation to the display of statistical information about care pathways and the editing of clinical information within a care pathway. The paper concludes with recommendations for interface design.

Democratizing local e-government: the role of virtual dialogue

The UK Government chose to deliver e-government services mainly through local authorities. Although e-government websites are provided by all local councils it appears that their level of use is still low and only few of them are fully transactional. The low level of user involvement is a significant factor for the low uptake of e-government websites by citizens. Therefore, it is worth investigating further how different government websites in the UK have addressed the issue of user involvement through the various features provided to potential users in their websites. The findings of the research reported here emphasize the crucial importance of user involvement -- in this case citizen engagement -- in the design, development and evolution of local e-Government systems.

Metadata Requirements for Repositories in Health Informatics Research: Evidence from the Analysis of Social Media Citations

Social media have transformed the way modern science is communicated. Although several studies have been focused on the use of social media for the dissemination of scientific knowledge and the measurement of the impact of academic output, we know very little about how academics cite social media in their publications. In order to address this gap, a content analysis was performed on a sample of 629 journal articles in medical informatics. The findings showed the presence of 109 citations to social media resources, the majority of which were blogs and wikis. Social media citations were used more frequently to support the literature review section of articles. However, a fair amount of citations was used in order to document various aspects of the methodology section, such as the data collection and analysis process. The paper concludes with the implications of these findings for metadata design for bibliographic databases (like PubMed and Medline).

Design factors affecting relevance judgment behaviour in the context of metadata surrogates

This paper reports on the findings of a user study which investigated the effects of structure, highlighting and quantity of information on university students’ interaction with metadata surrogates of learning object repositories (LORs) during the relevance judgement process. The literature review revealed a lack of studies investigating how metadata surrogates should be designed to meet users’ needs and improve the effectiveness of relevance judgement. In order to address this issue, different versions of a prototype system, called META-LOR 2, were developed and evaluated in terms of the time needed for users to find relevant information, the accuracy of their relevance judgements and their satisfaction. To evaluate the prototype, a user study was conducted where participants were asked to complete a set of tasks and fill in satisfaction questionnaires. The findings showed that participants performed better and were more satisfied with those versions of the prototype which highlighted metadata elements that included the query terms, used clusters or categories to organize metadata elements in the surrogates and included metadata elements which were relevant to the query or task at hand. The paper concludes with some recommendations for improving the design of metadata surrogates in search result interfaces.

The use of metadata objects in the analysis and representation of clinical knowledge

The aim of this paper is to present the use of metadata in a novel clinical decision-making tool, called COCPIT. The purpose of the tool is to make use of interactive care pathways in order to analyse and represent information stored in patients’ health records. The implementation of re-usable metadata objects is an important predicate of the system’s specification both for the design of visual care pathways and the statistical representation of clinical knowledge. The paper concludes with a summary of the next steps involved in the design and evaluation of metadata for COCPIT.

Multi-method laboratory user evaluation of an actionable clinical performance information system: implications for usability and patient safety

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