1
|
Shah AM, Lee KY, Hidayat A, Falchook A, Muhammad W. A text analytics approach for mining public discussions in online cancer forum: Analysis of multi-intent lung cancer treatment dataset. Int J Med Inform 2024; 184:105375. [PMID: 38367390 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2024.105375] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/05/2023] [Revised: 01/25/2024] [Accepted: 02/07/2024] [Indexed: 02/19/2024]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Online cancer forums (OCF) are increasingly popular platforms for patients and caregivers to discuss, seek information on, and share opinions about diseases and treatments. This interaction generates a substantial amount of unstructured text data, necessitating deeper exploration. Using time series data, our study exploits topic modeling in the novel domain of online cancer forums (OCFs) to identify meaningful topics and changing dynamics of online discussion across different lung cancer treatment intent groups. METHODS For this purpose, a dataset comprising 27,998 forum posts about lung cancer was collected from three OCFs: lungcancer.net, lungevity.org, and reddit.com, spanning the years 2016 to 2018. RESULTS The analysis reflects the public discussion on multi-intent lung cancer treatment over time, taking into account seasonal variations. Discussions on cancer symptoms and prevention garnered the most attention, dominating both curative and palliative care discussions. There were distinct seasonal peaks: curative care topics surged from winter to late spring, while palliative care topics peaked from late summer to mid-autumn. Keyword analysis highlighted that lung cancer diagnosis and treatment were primary topics, whereas cancer prevention and treatment outcomes were predominant across multi-care contexts. For the study period, curative care discussions predominantly revolved around informational support and disease syndromes. In contrast, social support and cancer prevention prevailed in the palliative care context. Notably, topics such as cancer screening and cancer treatment exhibit pronounced seasonal variations in curative care, peaking in frequency during the summers (May to August) of the study period. Meanwhile, the topic of tumor control within palliative care showed significant seasonal influence during the winters and summers of 2017 and 2018. CONCLUSION Our text analysis approach using OCF data shows potential for computational methods in this novel domain to gain insights into trends in public cancer communication and seasonal variations for a better understanding of improving personalized care, decision support, treatment outcomes, and quality of life.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Adnan Muhammad Shah
- Chair of Marketing and Innovation, University of Hamburg, 20146, Germany; Department of Physics, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Florida Atlantic University, FL 33431-0991, United States; Department of Computer Engineering, Gachon University, Seoul 13120. Republic of Korea.
| | - Kang Yoon Lee
- Department of Computer Engineering, Gachon University, Seoul 13120. Republic of Korea.
| | - Abdullah Hidayat
- Department of Physics, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Florida Atlantic University, FL 33431-0991, United States.
| | - Aaron Falchook
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Memorial Hospital West, Memorial Cancer Institute (MCI), Pembroke Pines, FL, United States.
| | - Wazir Muhammad
- Department of Physics, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Florida Atlantic University, FL 33431-0991, United States.
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Geng S, He Y, Duan L, Yang C, Wu X, Liang G, Niu B. The Association Between Linguistic Characteristics of Physicians' Communication and Their Economic Returns: Mixed Method Study. J Med Internet Res 2024; 26:e42850. [PMID: 38206657 PMCID: PMC10811595 DOI: 10.2196/42850] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2022] [Revised: 02/24/2023] [Accepted: 11/17/2023] [Indexed: 01/12/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Web-based health care has the potential to improve health care access and convenience for patients with limited mobility, but its success depends on active physician participation. The economic returns of internet-based health care initiatives are an important factor that can motivate physicians to continue their participation. Although several studies have examined the communication patterns and influences of web-based health consultations, the correlation between physicians' communication characteristics and their economic returns remains unexplored. OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate how the linguistic features of 2 modes of physician-patient communication, instrumental and affective, determine the physician's economic returns, measured by the honorarium their patients agree to pay per consultation. We also examined the moderating effects of communication media (web-based text messages and voice messages) and the compounding effects of different communication features on economic returns. METHODS We collected 40,563 web-based consultations from 528 physicians across 4 disease specialties on a large, web-based health care platform in China. Communication features were extracted using linguistic inquiry and word count, and we used multivariable linear regression and K-means clustering to analyze the data. RESULTS We found that the use of cognitive processing language (ie, words related to insight, causation, tentativeness, and certainty) in instrumental communication and positive emotion-related words in affective communication were positively associated with the economic returns of physicians. However, the extensive use of discrepancy-related words could generate adverse effects. We also found that the use of voice messages for service delivery magnified the effects of cognitive processing language but did not moderate the effects of affective processing language. The highest economic returns were associated with consultations in which the physicians used few expressions related to negative emotion; used more terms associated with positive emotions; and later, used instrumental communication language. CONCLUSIONS Our study provides empirical evidence about the relationship between physicians' communication characteristics and their economic returns. It contributes to a better understanding of patient-physician interactions from a professional-client perspective and has practical implications for physicians and web-based health care platform executives.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Shuang Geng
- College of Management, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
| | - Yuqin He
- College of Management, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
| | - Liezhen Duan
- College of Management, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
| | - Chen Yang
- College of Management, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
| | - Xusheng Wu
- Shenzhen Health Development Research and Data Management Center, Shenzhen, China
| | - Gemin Liang
- College of Management, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
| | - Ben Niu
- College of Management, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
El-Jack K, Henderson K, Andy AU, Southwick L. Reddit Users' Questions and Concerns about Anesthesia. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MEDICAL STUDENTS 2023. [DOI: 10.5195/ijms.2022.1687] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/22/2023] Open
Abstract
Background: Patients utilize social media in search of support networks. Reddit is one of the most popular social media sites and allows users to anonymously connect. Anesthesia patients are actively using Reddit to discuss their treatment options and experiences within the medical system.
Methods: Posts published on an active Reddit forum on Anesthesia (i.e., /r/Anesthesia) were used. Big Query was used to collect posts from /r/Anesthesia. We collected 3,288 posts published between December 2015 and August 2019. We collected a control group of 3,288 posts from a Reddit forum not related to Anesthesia. Using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) we extracted 20 topics from our data set. The LDA topic themes most associated with posts in /r/Anesthesia compared to the control group were determined.
Results: LDA analysis of posts in /r/Anesthesia relative to a control group produced 6 distinct categories of posts (Table 1). The posts most associated with /r/Anesthesia when compared to a control group were posts belonging to the “Physician-Patient Experience” category (Cohen’s d= 0.389) while the posts least associated with /r/Anesthesia were from the “Uncertainties” category of posts (Cohen’s d= 0.147). Example experiences from members of the /r/Anesthesia forum highlight subjective experiences of patients undergoing anesthesia.
Conclusions: The language used on social media can provide insights into an individual's experience with anesthesia and inform physicians about patient concerns. Anesthesiologists are poised to address these concerns and prevent anonymous misinformation by providing verified physician insights on the forum /r/Anesthesia.
Collapse
|
4
|
Mavragani A, Duffin S, Gough RE, Bath PA. Use of Online Health Forums by People Living With Breast Cancer During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Thematic Analysis. JMIR Cancer 2023; 9:e42783. [PMID: 36473015 PMCID: PMC9907982 DOI: 10.2196/42783] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/18/2022] [Revised: 11/24/2022] [Accepted: 12/05/2022] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND At the time of the UK COVID-19 lockdowns, online health forums (OHFs) were one of the relatively few remaining accessible sources of peer support for people living with breast cancer. Cancer services were heavily affected by the pandemic in many ways, including the closure of many of the customary support services. Previous studies indicate that loneliness, anxiety, distress, and depression caused by COVID-19 were common among people living with breast cancer, and this suggests that the role of OHFs in providing users with support, information, and empathy could have been of increased importance at that time. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to examine how people living with breast cancer shared information, experiences, and emotions in an OHF during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS This qualitative study thematically analyzed posts from the discussion forums of an OHF provided by the UK charity, Breast Cancer Now. We selected 1053 posts from the time of 2 UK lockdowns: March 16, 2020, to June 15, 2020 (lockdown 1), and January 6, 2021, to March 8, 2021 (lockdown 3), for analysis, from 2 of the forum's boards (for recently diagnosed people and for those undergoing chemotherapy). We analyzed the data using the original 6 steps for thematic analysis by Braun and Clarke but by following a codebook approach. Descriptive statistics for posts were also derived. RESULTS We found that COVID-19 amplified the forum's value to its users. As patients with cancer, participants were in a situation that was "bad enough already," and the COVID-19 pandemic heightened this difficult situation. The forum's value, which was already high for the information and peer support it provided, increased because COVID-19 caused some special information needs that forum users were uniquely well placed to fulfill as people experiencing the combined effects of having breast cancer during the pandemic. The forum also met the emotional needs generated by the COVID-19 pandemic and was valued as a place where loneliness during the pandemic may be relieved and users' spirits lifted in a variety of ways specific to this period. We found some differences in use between the 2 periods and the 2 boards-most noticeable was the great fear and anxiety expressed at the beginning of lockdown 1. Both the beginning and end of lockdown periods were particularly difficult for participants, with the ends seen as potentially increasing isolation. CONCLUSIONS The forums were an important source of support and information to their users, with their value increasing during the lockdowns for a variety of reasons. Our findings will be helpful to organizations offering OHFs and to health care workers advising people living with breast cancer about sources of support.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
| | - Suzanne Duffin
- Information School, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Rosemarie E Gough
- School of Health and Related Research, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Peter A Bath
- Information School, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| |
Collapse
|
5
|
Kaur M, Costello J, Willis E, Kelm K, Reformat MZ, Bolduc FV. Deciphering Diversity of Mental Models in Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Knowledge Graph Representation of Public Data Using Natural Language Processing (Preprint). J Med Internet Res 2022; 24:e39888. [PMID: 35930346 PMCID: PMC9391978 DOI: 10.2196/39888] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/26/2022] [Revised: 07/05/2022] [Accepted: 07/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
Background Understanding how individuals think about a topic, known as the mental model, can significantly improve communication, especially in the medical domain where emotions and implications are high. Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) represent a group of diagnoses, affecting up to 18% of the global population, involving differences in the development of cognitive or social functions. In this study, we focus on 2 NDDs, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which involve multiple symptoms and interventions requiring interactions between 2 important stakeholders: parents and health professionals. There is a gap in our understanding of differences between mental models for each stakeholder, making communication between stakeholders more difficult than it could be. Objective We aim to build knowledge graphs (KGs) from web-based information relevant to each stakeholder as proxies of mental models. These KGs will accelerate the identification of shared and divergent concerns between stakeholders. The developed KGs can help improve knowledge mobilization, communication, and care for individuals with ADHD and ASD. Methods We created 2 data sets by collecting the posts from web-based forums and PubMed abstracts related to ADHD and ASD. We utilized the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) to detect biomedical concepts and applied Positive Pointwise Mutual Information followed by truncated Singular Value Decomposition to obtain corpus-based concept embeddings for each data set. Each data set is represented as a KG using a property graph model. Semantic relatedness between concepts is calculated to rank the relation strength of concepts and stored in the KG as relation weights. UMLS disorder-relevant semantic types are used to provide additional categorical information about each concept’s domain. Results The developed KGs contain concepts from both data sets, with node sizes representing the co-occurrence frequency of concepts and edge sizes representing relevance between concepts. ADHD- and ASD-related concepts from different semantic types shows diverse areas of concerns and complex needs of the conditions. KG identifies converging and diverging concepts between health professionals literature (PubMed) and parental concerns (web-based forums), which may correspond to the differences between mental models for each stakeholder. Conclusions We show for the first time that generating KGs from web-based data can capture the complex needs of families dealing with ADHD or ASD. Moreover, we showed points of convergence between families and health professionals’ KGs. Natural language processing–based KG provides access to a large sample size, which is often a limiting factor for traditional in-person mental model mapping. Our work offers a high throughput access to mental model maps, which could be used for further in-person validation, knowledge mobilization projects, and basis for communication about potential blind spots from stakeholders in interactions about NDDs. Future research will be needed to identify how concepts could interact together differently for each stakeholder.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Manpreet Kaur
- Department of Pediatrics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | - Jeremy Costello
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | - Elyse Willis
- Department of Pediatrics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | - Karen Kelm
- Department of Pediatrics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | - Marek Z Reformat
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
- Information Technology Institute, University of Social Sciences, Łódź, Poland
| | - Francois V Bolduc
- Department of Pediatrics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
- Department of Medical Genetics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
- Women and Children Health Research Institute, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
- Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| |
Collapse
|
6
|
Neil JM, Senecal C, Ballini L, Chang Y, Goshe B, Flores E, Ostroff JS, Park ER. A multi-method evaluation of tobacco treatment trial recruitment messages for current smokers recently diagnosed with cancer: A pilot factorial randomized control trial (Preprint). JMIR Cancer 2022; 8:e37526. [PMID: 36001378 PMCID: PMC9453579 DOI: 10.2196/37526] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/23/2022] [Revised: 04/17/2022] [Accepted: 04/18/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Background A cancer diagnosis can catalyze motivation to quit smoking. Tobacco treatment trials offer cessation resources but have low accrual rates. Digital outreach may improve accrual, but knowledge of how best to recruit smokers with recent diagnoses is limited. Objective This study aims to identify the message frames that were most effective in promoting intent to talk to a physician about participating in a tobacco treatment trial for smokers recently diagnosed with cancer. Methods From February to April 2019, current smokers diagnosed within the past 24 months were recruited from a national web-based panel for a multimethod pilot randomized trial (N=99). Participants were randomized to a 2×3 plus control factorial design that tested 3 unique message frames: proximal versus distal threats of smoking, costs of continued smoking versus benefits of quitting, and gains of participating versus losses of not participating in a tobacco treatment trial. The primary outcome was intent to talk to a physician about participating in a tobacco treatment trial. In phase 1, the main effect within each message factor level was examined using ANOVA and compared with the control condition. Other message evaluation and effectiveness measures were collected and explored in a multivariable model predicting intent to talk to a physician. In phase 2, open-text evaluations of the messages were analyzed using natural language processing software (Leximancer) to generate a thematic concept map and Linguistic Inquiry Word Count to identify and compare the prevalence of linguistic markers among message factors. Results Of the 99 participants, 76 (77%) completed the intervention. Participants who received the cost of continued smoking frame were significantly more likely to intend to talk to their physician about participating in a tobacco treatment trial than those who received the benefits of the quitting frame (mean costs 5.13, SD 1.70 vs mean benefits 4.23, SD 1.86; P=.04). Participants who received the proximal risks of continued smoking frame were significantly more likely to seek more information about participating (mean distal 4.83, SD 1.61 vs mean proximal 5.55, SD 1.15; P=.04), and those who received the losses of not participating frame reported significantly improved perceptions of smoking cessation research (mean gain 3.98, SD 0.83 vs mean loss 4.38, SD 0.78; P=.01). Male participants (P=.006) and those with greater message relevancy (P=.001) were significantly more likely to intend to talk to their physician. Participants’ perceptions of their smoking habits, as well as their motivation to quit smoking, were prevalent themes in the open-text data. Differences in the percentages of affective words across message frames were identified. Conclusions Multimethod approaches are needed to develop evidence-based recruitment messages for patients recently diagnosed with cancer. Future tobacco treatment trials should evaluate the effectiveness of different message frames on smoker enrollment rates. Trial Registration Clinicaltrials.gov NCT05471284; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05471284
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Jordan M Neil
- Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust Health Promotion Research Center, Stephenson Cancer Center, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK, United States
| | - Christian Senecal
- Department of Community Health, Tufts University, Medford, MA, United States
| | - Lauren Ballini
- Department of Community Health, Tufts University, Medford, MA, United States
| | - Yuchiao Chang
- Division of General Internal Medicine, Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Brett Goshe
- Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Efren Flores
- Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Jamie S Ostroff
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, United States
| | - Elyse R Park
- Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States
| |
Collapse
|