bims-librar Biomed News
on Biomedical librarianship
Issue of 2021–09–12
nineteen papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society



  1. JMIR Med Inform. 2021 Sep 09. 9(9): e30401
       BACKGROUND: The rapid growth of the biomedical literature makes identifying strong evidence a time-consuming task. Applying machine learning to the process could be a viable solution that limits effort while maintaining accuracy.
    OBJECTIVE: The goal of the research was to summarize the nature and comparative performance of machine learning approaches that have been applied to retrieve high-quality evidence for clinical consideration from the biomedical literature.
    METHODS: We conducted a systematic review of studies that applied machine learning techniques to identify high-quality clinical articles in the biomedical literature. Multiple databases were searched to July 2020. Extracted data focused on the applied machine learning model, steps in the development of the models, and model performance.
    RESULTS: From 3918 retrieved studies, 10 met our inclusion criteria. All followed a supervised machine learning approach and applied, from a limited range of options, a high-quality standard for the training of their model. The results show that machine learning can achieve a sensitivity of 95% while maintaining a high precision of 86%.
    CONCLUSIONS: Machine learning approaches perform well in retrieving high-quality clinical studies. Performance may improve by applying more sophisticated approaches such as active learning and unsupervised machine learning approaches.
    Keywords:  accuracy; bioinformatics; clinical care; clinical support; evidence-based medicine; information retrieval; literature databases; machine learning; medical literature; systematic review
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2196/30401
  2. Med Ref Serv Q. 2021 Jul-Sep;40(3):40(3): 292-302
      The Rutgers University (RU) Open and Affordable Textbooks (OAT) Program provides $1,000 incentive awards to faculty who commit to redesigning or developing a course to use open or affordable course materials. This can include replacing a traditional textbook with open educational resources (OER), library-licensed materials, course reserves, self-developed materials, or a combination of these. It is a university-wide initiative, but this paper will focus on the impact on students in the health science programs. In many cases Health Sciences faculty went beyond using open educational resources by developing their own and making them freely available to their students and others. As of 2020 it is estimated students in the health sciences have saved $285,218 through the use of open materials and sustainable course design.
    Keywords:  Academic library; medical education; medical library; medical school; open education resources
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2021.1945864
  3. Med Ref Serv Q. 2021 Jul-Sep;40(3):40(3): 337-346
      Undergraduate Medical Education (UME) program curriculum redesign at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in the early 2010s resulted in incorporation of a long-term research project-called "Scholarly Projects"-into the UME experience. Since 2014, OHSU librarians have participated in curricular support for Scholarly Projects, focusing on helping students develop skills in searching and information management at a moment when the students are starting their projects. This library participation has developed over time and continues to change in response to ongoing librarian reflection on student engagement with the material.
    Keywords:  Competency-based medical education; Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs); Evidence-Based Practice (EBP); curriculum; information literacy; information management; student scholarship; undergraduate medical education
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2021.1945871
  4. Med Ref Serv Q. 2021 Jul-Sep;40(3):40(3): 261-273
      Literature has shown that inaccessible content is a barrier to student success and an impediment to student retention. Despite legal obligations for accessible course content, creators of course materials are often unaware of the benefits of improved accessibility and their personal liability. To address these accessibility issues, a partnership was developed between the library and two campus departments to create a formal, campus wide accessibility service that would make all online course content fully accessible on Day 1, through design initiatives rather than having faculty wait for an accommodation request, to foster student success and support faculty course development.
    Keywords:  Accessibility; Blackboard Ally; collaborative projects; course design; faculty services; online courses; video captioning
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2021.1945862
  5. Med Ref Serv Q. 2021 Jul-Sep;40(3):40(3): 249-260
      In 2009, the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at Florida International University opened its doors. From the start, its medical library sought student feedback by administering a survey to each class. The responses found that students use online resources far more than the facility, that the hours are mostly adequate, and that most students prefer a combination of print and electronic textbooks. By analyzing the data, the library determined students' preferences for space, services, and resources and how those preferences have changed over time. This data will inform future decisions about the library's collection, services, and facility.
    Keywords:  Data collection; library facility; library resources; library survey; medical library; medical students; student preferences
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2021.1945855
  6. Med Ref Serv Q. 2021 Jul-Sep;40(3):40(3): 303-310
      Librarians adopted and utilized web-based Google suite applications as a method of collaborating with each other on projects, research, and professional association membership duties. However, as cybercriminals have begun to exploit these tools to infect healthcare networks with ransomware, many hospital IT departments have blocked access to Google applications. This paper provides a background on security risks to healthcare institutions and possible alternatives to Google applications hospital librarians can use to continue collaborating.
    Keywords:  Google; hospital libraries; network security; ransomware
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2021.1945865
  7. Res Synth Methods. 2021 Sep 08.
       BACKGROUND: The approach to identifying evidence for inclusion in realist reviews differs from that used in 'traditional' systematic reviews. Guidance suggests that realist reviews should be inclusive of diverse data from a range of sources, gathered in iterative searching cycles. Saturation is prioritised over exhaustiveness. Supplementary techniques such as citation snowballing are emphasised as potentially important sources of evidence.
    METHODS: This paper describes the processes used to identify evidence in a selection of realist reviews focused on primary health care settings and examines the origin and type of evidence selected for inclusion. Data from five realist reviews were extracted from a) reviewers' reference management libraries and b) records kept by review teams.
    RESULTS: Although all reviews focused on primary health care, they used data from a wide range of document types and research designs, drawing on learning from multiple perspectives and settings, and sourced the documents containing this data in a variety of ways. Systematic searching of academic databases played an important role, supplementary search techniques such as snowballing were used to identify a significant proportion of documents included in the reviews.
    CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis demonstrates the diverse data sources used within realist reviews and the need for flexible, responsive efforts to identify relevant documents. Reviewers and information specialists should devise approaches to data gathering that reflect the individual needs of realist review projects and report these transparently. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
    Keywords:  Realist review; grey literature; information retrieval; literature searching; primary health care; realist synthesis
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1002/jrsm.1523
  8. Med Ref Serv Q. 2021 Jul-Sep;40(3):40(3): 311-318
      MedNar is a helpful complement to use with standard medical databases like PubMed and MedlinePlus for deep web information searches, for those looking to discover the most relevant and recent information to use in the practice of Evidence Based Medicine. Since the deep web contains extensive information, although not easily accessible via traditional internet search engines, it is important to consider deep web searches. This article investigates MedNar, a free deep web database, and details why medical evidence explorers should include it in their tool belts.
    Keywords:  Deep web; Evidence Based Medicine (EBM); MedNar; federated search; grey literature; medical database; medical search
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2021.1945866
  9. Res Synth Methods. 2021 Sep 08.
      Systematic reviews of medical devices have generally adopted the same methodology for the conduct of their reviews as reviews of other clinical interventions, in particular, medicines. It has been suggested that these methods may need to be developed to account for the challenges of reviewing the evidence for medical devices when compared to reviews of medicines. The purpose of this research note is to focus on the methods of searching for medical devices. Our aim is to set out guidance on 'how to search' for medical devices. This includes: Defining what you are searching for; How to design a search strategy; Searching bibliographic databases; Searching beyond bibliographic databases; and Search reporting. The research note is written by three experienced searchers/researchers with experience of critically appraising Medical Technologies Evaluation Programme (MTEP) submissions, undertaking systematic searches and/or reviews of medical devices, or developing guidance for searching for studies for systematic reviews of the effectiveness of interventions, including medical devices. The research note includes a worked example of a search for a fictitious medical device. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1002/jrsm.1524
  10. Med Ref Serv Q. 2021 Jul-Sep;40(3):40(3): 329-336
      The explosive growth of digital information in recent years has amplified the information overload experienced by today's health-care professionals. In particular, the wide variety of unstructured text makes it difficult for researchers to find meaningful data without spending a considerable amount of time reading. Text mining can be used to facilitate better discoverability and analysis, and aid researchers in identifying critical trends and connections. This column will introduce key text-mining terms, recent use cases of biomedical text mining, and current applications for this technology in medical libraries.
    Keywords:  COVID-19; data mining; emerging technology; information overload; machine learning
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2021.1945869
  11. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2021 Sep 06. 21(1): 258
       BACKGROUND: Biomedical language translation requires multi-lingual fluency as well as relevant domain knowledge. Such requirements make it challenging to train qualified translators and costly to generate high-quality translations. Machine translation represents an effective alternative, but accurate machine translation requires large amounts of in-domain data. While such datasets are abundant in general domains, they are less accessible in the biomedical domain. Chinese and English are two of the most widely spoken languages, yet to our knowledge, a parallel corpus does not exist for this language pair in the biomedical domain.
    DESCRIPTION: We developed an effective pipeline to acquire and process an English-Chinese parallel corpus from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). This corpus consists of about 100,000 sentence pairs and 3,000,000 tokens on each side. We showed that training on out-of-domain data and fine-tuning with as few as 4000 NEJM sentence pairs improve translation quality by 25.3 (13.4) BLEU for en[Formula: see text]zh (zh[Formula: see text]en) directions. Translation quality continues to improve at a slower pace on larger in-domain data subsets, with a total increase of 33.0 (24.3) BLEU for en[Formula: see text]zh (zh[Formula: see text]en) directions on the full dataset.
    CONCLUSIONS: The code and data are available at https://github.com/boxiangliu/ParaMed .
    Keywords:  Machine translation; Natural language processing; Text mining
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-021-01621-8
  12. Rev Esc Enferm USP. 2021 ;pii: S0080-62342021000100530. [Epub ahead of print]55 e20200517
       OBJECTIVE: To analyze the reliability of information available on popular websites about vaccination of pregnant women according to the recommendations of the Brazilian Ministry of Health.
    METHOD: Descriptive and comparative study. For data collection, a checklist composed of information on recommended, contraindicated, and indicated vaccines in special situations during pregnancy, according to the Ministry of Health, was elaborated.
    RESULTS: None of the analyzed websites presented all the recommended information. Contraindications, most common adverse events, simultaneous administration of vaccines, information on the DT vaccine, and recommended vaccines in special situations were presented by a minority of websites.
    CONCLUSION: Information available on websites about the vaccination of pregnant women is not always based on the recommendations and misinformation may interfere with the acceptance of this practice. The importance of the professionals of the multidisciplinary team as information mediators, particularly the nurse, is emphasized, as is the need for regulating the production and dissemination of information on the internet.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1590/1980-220X-REEUSP-2020-0517
  13. J Obstet Gynaecol Can. 2021 Sep 01. pii: S1701-2163(21)00686-1. [Epub ahead of print]
       OBJECTIVE: Evaluate the quality of information reported online about endometriosis and period pain.
    METHODS: An online search identified the top 20 websites for 4 search engines (Google, Ask, Bing, Yahoo). Videos, duplicates, and websites not containing information related to endometriosis and period pain were excluded. Three independent authors screened websites and systematically extracted data on website characteristics and on diagnosis and treatment mentions. Website accuracy and completeness were rated for a score out of 15. The Flesch readability ease score (FRES) was used to assess readability.
    RESULTS: Of 34 websites included, most were news related (44.1%) and health care affiliated (26.5%). Websites with affiliations had significantly higher accuracy scores than those without. Those with references had significantly higher completeness than those without. Non-news-related websites had significantly higher accuracy and completeness than news-related websites. The most commonly reported symptoms were dysmenorrhea (97.1% of websites), infertility (88.2%), and dyspareunia (82.4%). Cancer was mentioned on 41.1% of websites. Diagnostic laparoscopy (91.0%) and ultrasound (88.3%) were the most commonly mentioned diagnostic tools. Commonly reported therapeutics included the oral contraceptive pill (79.4%), laparoscopy (70.6%), non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs; 67.6%), and gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists (64.7%). Hysterectomy (59.0%) was mentioned more than progestins (53.0%). Overall, 18 of 34 websites (53%) contained 1 or more inaccurate or misleading statements.
    CONCLUSION: While most websites contained accurate statements, commonly reported misconceptions included an emphasized risk of cancer, lack of use/benefit of ultrasound for diagnosis, and a bias for surgical over medical management, where laparoscopy was mentioned more than first-line medications. This study highlights the importance of directing patients to evidence-based resources.
    Keywords:  dysmenorrhea; evidence-based resources; internet; online; pelvic pain; website(s)
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jogc.2021.08.007
  14. J Cancer Surviv. 2021 Sep 09.
       PURPOSE: As the cancer survivor population increases, diminished health care provider capacity will place more responsibility on survivors to obtain health information. Many survivors search for cancer information online, yet there is a dearth of research on how survivors obtain and engage with this information. This study examined cancer survivors' information-seeking behaviors and perceptions during a self-guided online search task.
    METHODS: Ten adult cancer survivors (largely breast and thyroid) completed a task in which they searched for online cancer-related information of their choice. Participants were asked to verbally narrate the procedural aspects of the task and provide real-time responses to the search results and experiences related to the task. Transcripts were analyzed using a qualitative descriptive approach, and codes and themes were examined and interpreted.
    RESULTS: Participants searched primarily for information specific to their cancer type and stage, seeking personalized information about risk factors, prognosis, and treatments. Additionally, participants reported having to engage in excessive navigation to find relevant cancer information, citing aesthetic, usability, and credibility features of the websites that they considered barriers to obtaining this information.
    CONCLUSIONS: Survivors' online health information needs require streamlined cancer information resources that are disaggregated by cancer type, stage, and treatment course and located on websites with aesthetic and usability features that facilitate expedient searches for personally relevant cancer information.
    IMPLICATIONS FOR CANCER SURVIVORS: This study provides useful perspectives of cancer survivors that may inform the development of online cancer resources to better serve this population.
    Keywords:  Cancer; Stage; Survivor
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11764-021-01082-y
  15. Eur J Health Econ. 2021 Sep 07.
      We examine the relationship between Internet-based health information seeking and the demand for physician services, using data collected from the 28 European Union states in 2014. Unlike previous research, our analysis distinguishes seekers of health information into those who use only non-Internet sources and those who use the Internet and possibly non-Internet sources. By comparing the frequencies of physician visits among the two groups of health information seekers and non-seekers, we infer the net association between online health information and the demand for physician services while partially controlling for the effects of concurrent seeking of offline health information. The following are the two key findings: (1) individuals' health status and sociodemographic factors shape online and offline health information seeking patterns in similar ways; and (2) the demand for physician services is positively associated with offline health information seeking and not with online health information. The net association with online health information would be even smaller after controlling for the effect of concurrent offline health information seeking. These results suggest that extending the availability of online health information would potentially reinforce the unequal access to health information, which could create greater variation in individuals' health management skills and benefits from health care in the long term. However, it would be associated with little or no increase in the demand for physician services, unlike the implications of previous research.
    Keywords:  Health care demand; Health information; Internet; Physician visits; Sample selection
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-021-01352-7
  16. Med Ref Serv Q. 2021 Jul-Sep;40(3):40(3): 274-291
      Medical faculty are among the most important user groups at any academic medical library. Knowing how medical faculty identify, access, and use information is important for collection development and instruction. This study found that medical faculty at an institution in Qatar identified information access and use as vital in their professional duties. However, they also noted limitations that warrant attention by the library to better serve this user group. Further, the results of this study were compared to a similar study of medical faculty in the United States, with noted similarities and differences in their access and use of information.
    Keywords:  Electronic resources; Qatar; faculty; information-seeking
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2021.1945863
  17. Ophthalmic Surg Lasers Imaging Retina. 2021 Sep;52(9): 478-483
       BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: To investigate the reliability and quality of vitreoretinal surgery videos posted on YouTube.
    PATIENTS AND METHODS: A search was made using the keywords "vitrectomy," "retinal surgery," and "vitreoretinal surgery" on YouTube. Total view counts, numbers of comments, likes and dislikes, publishing dates, and source of videos were recorded. Educational quality and accuracy of the video content were evaluated using the DISCERN score, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) scoring system, and Global Quality Scores (GQS).
    RESULTS: There were 208 videos included in the study; 152 (73.1%) videos were uploaded by doctors and 56 (26.9%) videos uploaded by non-doctors. Mean DISCERN, JAMA, and GQS scores were 37.65 ± 10.49 (20-69), 0.82 ± 0.52 (0-4), 2.86 ± 0.86 (1-5), respectively.
    CONCLUSIONS: Vitreoretinal surgery videos on YouTube were of low quality and reliability. Those who want to use YouTube videos as a reference for vitreoretinal surgery should pay extra attention to selection of content. [Ophthalmic Surg Lasers Imaging Retina. 2021;52:478-483.].
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3928/23258160-20210817-01
  18. Health Info Libr J. 2021 Sep 06.
       BACKGROUND: Access to reliable and credible health information improves individuals' personal care level in crises, such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. It subsequently results in enhancing the community's health and reducing the health system's costs.
    OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to investigate the COVID-19 related information seeking behaviour demonstrated by citizens in Isfahan, Iran.
    METHODS: This research was conducted in 2020 and employed a qualitative approach using conventional content analysis. The research population was selected from almost different social classes of people in Iran using purposive sampling. The saturation point was reached at 24 semi-structured interviews. The data's soundness was confirmed based on the criteria of credibility, confirmability, dependability and transferability proposed by Guba and Lincoln.
    RESULTS: The findings revealed five subcategories and 25 codes within the information seeking behaviour. The subcategories included attitude towards the COVID-19 crisis, information needs, information resources, information validation and information seeking barriers.
    CONCLUSION: People seek information from various resources to update their knowledge and become more prepared in the face of COVID-19. The findings can be used to develop policies on informing and preventing the dissemination of false information in crises, such as the COVID-19 crisis.
    Keywords:  COVID-19; information seeking behaviour; misinformation; social media
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12396
  19. J Educ Health Promot. 2021 ;10 278
       BACKGROUND: Online platforms are the most popular mode of entertainment, simultaneously imparting knowledge and education. During COVID pandemic, there was a sudden influx of educational videos on social media/websites with a purpose of spreading the information about hand hygiene (HH) practices. The aim of this study was to explore and assess the HH videos based on its content and technical quality to promote the learning experience of videos.
    MATERIALS AND METHODS: HH videos from the official sites of five international health organizations and 42 national health institutes were assessed based on their availability of the HH videos. Verified YouTube videos on HH since January 2020 were further screened and assessed using the author's designed validated checklist. Each video was systematically evaluated and scored against the seven categories, namely introduction, audio, visuals/background, speaker/demonstrator, content, timing, and appeal.
    RESULTS: A total of 50 videos were assessed for analysis. Of these, 82% of videos scored >50%, i.e., 14. Among low scorer, seven videos were from YouTube channel. Majority of the videos were technically sound, 44% aroused interest, 82% had a simple, understandable message; in around 46% of the videos, the presenter was a healthcare worker; and in 24%, the information was accurate as per the World Health Organization guidelines.
    CONCLUSIONS: This study concluded that most of the HH videos were found to be just above average in their content quality and technicality.
    Keywords:  COVID-19; Content analysis; hand hygiene; internet; video-audio media
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.4103/jehp.jehp_1024_20