Personalizing web information for patients: linking patient medical data with the web via a patient personal knowledge base

Abstract

This paper describes ongoing study that examines problems with existing patient health information sources and investigates an approach for linking (i.e. integrating) data from a patient's medical record(s) with relevant health information on the web. The aim is to provide patients with simplified, customized and controlled access to web information. Data from patient medical records are extracted and linked with relevant health information on the web through a web search service. These are made available to patients through a web portal that we refer to as the patient knowledge base (PatientKB). Our integration approach utilizes term semantics (i.e. meaning) to enrich the web search and simplify medical terms for patients. In the current implementation, patients have guided, secure and relatively customized access to basic and relevant web information on their diagnoses. Future implementation will attempt to achieve further customization, extensibility and safety features. This paper investigates how ideas presented in an earlier study can be implemented.

Patients at the Centre: Methodological Considerations for Evaluating Evidence from Health Interventions Involving Patients Use of Web-Based Information Systems~!2009-08-03~!2010-01-12~!2010-09-14~!

“…From a patient's perspective the huge array of web-based health resources poses its own problems including differentials amongst individual patients to be able to categorise or recognise the validity and reliability of the content provided [33]. Although these resources may improve patient knowledge, their effect on objective clinical outcomes is inconsistent [56,57].…”

“…However, the increasing penetration of the Internet and access and use of on-line health information by patients and citizens has made the use of other methods for evaluating the impact of information systems become more widely accepted [23,[26][27][28][29]. Similarly as the health information systems themselves have evolved the focus of evaluation has moved from hardware and systems architectures towards the end-user where new techniques and evaluation criteria focused on usability, interfaces and content have been utilised [30][31][32][33]. This stated, there continues to be a need to improve the quality of reporting of evaluation studies [34].…”

“…Focusing on technological acceptance or usability is sensible but it may often fail to examine in any detail the interplay of personal factors that make up an individual patients technology experiences, attitudes and responses. Further, in the realm of patients' as 'users' the implicit assumption of mandatory use must be discarded as individual patients adopt and use systems in ways that suit themselves and their lifestyles and not necessarily as anticipated by clinicians or information systems professionals [23,24,26,29,31,33,45,49].…”

Intelligent Personal Health Record: Experience and Open Issues

“…Several existing personalized patient health information systems can dynamically generate tailored hypertext pages explaining the disease, its symptoms, and possible treatment options usually via using rules [92,93,94]. Some of these systems use the user's medical history stored in the EMR to make simple inferences on concepts she is likely to be unfamiliar with.…”

Information and communication technology-based innovations for aging healthcare: a literature review

“…Healthcare information providers (such as private and public healthcare institutes that works for community or public healthcare awareness) still suffer in choosing use of technologies for meeting the information needs of the population. Various ICT provisions became common as consistent systems of supporting the emerging information transferring (Thraen et al, 2012); web-based social networking (Pulman, 2010); personalised healthcare advice (Al-Busaidi et al, 2006) and security and monitoring (Hoof et al, 2011) along with other technology embedded solutions. However, most previous studies focus on the impact of ICT-based solutions only from end-user demands perspective highlighting the benefits and positive impacts on meeting particular demand such as for knowledge sharing (Pulman, 2010).…”