Background: Crowdsourcing is used increasingly in health and medical research. Crowdsourcing is the process of aggregating crowd wisdom to solve a problem. The purpose of this systematic review is to summarize quantitative evidence on crowdsourcing to improve health. Methods: We followed Cochrane systematic review guidance and systematically searched seven databases up to September 4th 2019. Studies were included if they reported on crowdsourcing and related to health or medicine. Studies were excluded if recruitment was the only use of crowdsourcing. We determined the level of evidence associated with review findings using the GRADE approach. Results: We screened 3508 citations, accessed 362 articles, and included 188 studies. Ninety-six studies examined effectiveness, 127 examined feasibility, and 37 examined cost. The most common purposes were to evaluate surgical skills (17 studies), to create sexual health messages (seven studies), and to provide layperson cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) out-of-hospital (six studies). Seventeen observational studies used crowdsourcing to evaluate surgical skills, finding that crowdsourcing evaluation was as effective as expert evaluation (low quality). Four studies used a challenge contest to solicit human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing promotion materials and increase HIV testing rates (moderate quality), and two of the four studies found this approach saved money. Three studies suggested that an interactive technology system increased rates of layperson initiated CPR out-ofhospital (moderate quality). However, studies analyzing crowdsourcing to evaluate surgical skills and laypersoninitiated CPR were only from high-income countries. Five studies examined crowdsourcing to inform artificial intelligence projects, most often related to annotation of medical data. Crowdsourcing was evaluated using different outcomes, limiting the extent to which studies could be pooled. Conclusions: Crowdsourcing has been used to improve health in many settings. Although crowdsourcing is effective at improving behavioral outcomes, more research is needed to understand effects on clinical outcomes and costs. More research is needed on crowdsourcing as a tool to develop artificial intelligence systems in medicine.
Background We aimed to examine the impact of lockdown on sexually transmitted infection (STI) diagnoses and access to a public sexual health service in the COVID-19 pandemic in Melbourne, Australia. Methods The operating hours of Melbourne Sexual Health Centre (MSHC) remained the same during the lockdown. We examined the number of consultations and STI at MSHC between January and June 2020 and stratified the data into pre-lockdown (3-February to 22-March), lockdown (23-March to 10-May) and post-lockdown (11-May to 28-June) with seven weeks in each period. Incidence rate ratio (IRR) and its 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated using Poisson regression models. Results The total number of consultations dropped from 7,818 in pre-lockdown to 4,652 during lockdown (IRR=0.60;95%CI:0.57-0.62) but increased to 5,347 in the post-lockdown period (IRR=1.15;95%CI:1.11-1.20). There was a 68% reduction in asymptomatic screening during lockdown (IRR=0.32; 95%CI:0.30-0.35) but it gradually increased in the post-lockdown period (IRR=1.59;95%CI:1.46-1.74). STI with milder symptoms showed a marked reduction, including non-gonococcal urethritis (IRR=0.60;95%CI:0.51-0.72), and candidiasis (IRR=0.61;95%CI:0.49-0.76) during lockdown compared with pre-lockdown. STI with more marked symptoms did not change significantly, including pelvic inflammatory disease (IRR=0.95;95%CI:0.61-1.47) and infectious syphilis (IRR=1.14;95%CI:0.73-1.77). There was no significant change in STI diagnoses in post-lockdown compared to lockdown. Conclusions The public appeared to be prioritising their attendance for sexual health services based on the urgency of their clinical conditions. This suggests that the effectiveness of clinical services in detecting, treating and preventing onward transmission of important symptomatic conditions is being mainly preserved despite large falls in absolute numbers of attendees.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.