Summary
Objective: To summarise the state of the art during the year 2020 in consumer health informatics
and education, with a special emphasis on “Managing Pandemics with Health Informatics
- Successes and Challenges”.
Methods: We conducted a systematic search of articles published in PubMed using a predefined
set of queries, which identified 147 potential articles for review. These articles
were screened according to topic relevance and 15 were selected for consideration
of best paper candidates, which were then presented to a panel of international experts
for full paper review and scoring. The top five papers were discussed in a consensus
meeting. Three papers received the highest score from the expert panel, and these
papers were selected to be representative papers on consumer informatics for managing
pandemics in the year 2020.
Results: Bibliometrics analysis conducted on words found in abstracts of the candidate papers
revealed 4 clusters of articles, where the clustering outcomes explained 77.04% of
the dispersion. The first cluster composed of articles related to the use of mobile
apps for video consultation and telehealth during the pandemic. The second revealed
studies reporting the lived experience of healthcare workers and patients during COVID-19.
The third focused on ways people used the internet to seek for health information
during the pandemic and the dissemination of fake news. The last cluster composed
of articles reporting the use of social listening methods (e.g., via tweet hashtags)
to explore the spread of the virus around the world.
Conclusions: The pandemic outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) constitutes a grave
risk to the global community and sparks a significant increase in public interest
and media coverage, especially on social media. Consumers are facing a new set of
challenges that were not considered before COVID-19, often finding themselves in a
world that is constantly changing—blended with facts and fake information—and unable
to decide what to do next. Despite most people understanding the good will behind
public health policies, one must not forget it is individuals we are supporting and
that their personal circumstances may affect how they perceive and comply with these
policies. Consumers more than ever need help to make sense of the uncertainty and
their situation and we need to help them navigate the best option in a world that
is constantly evolving.
Keywords
Consumer health informatics - IMIA Yearbook - COVID-19
