Chronic illness can be overwhelming to patients because it impacts many areas of their daily lives. Accordingly, many patients turn to online health support groups to get social support. In face-to-face patient support groups (F2F), health professional moderators provide clinical expertise within the context of peer-patients' sharing of experience. However, in online health community settings, because health professionals' time and resources are expensive, it is challenging to get health professionals' opinions for thousands of messages posted each day. To solve this problem, I propose to develop methods and techniques that maximize the use of already available clinical expertise online for online peer-patient conversation threads by developing a system, InfoMediator. The InfoMediator will semi-automatically weave health professionals' existing answers to patients' questions into peer-patient conversations by using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques complemented by user feedback. As the career development component of this proposal, I deepen my skills and knowledge in NLP necessary for proposed work and patient education. As I develop the NLP techniques and knowledge in patient education, I and my mentors will develop methods and techniques that address weaving clinical expertise within peer-patient conversations by designing, implementing, and evaluating socio-technical aspects of the InfoMediator. The training opportunities provided by this NIH NLM K01 grant, together with the supportive research environment at Michigan State University, will help further extend my existing expertise in human-computer interaction, design, and health informatics to establish my independent informatics research program in patient-centered technologies. Focusing on persons with diabetes, the outcomes of the proposed research will help us understand how to empower persons with diabetes to improve self- efficacy and self-care, while increasing the quality of online health information environment.

Public Health Relevance

Because health professionals' time and resources are expensive, it is challenging for online health communities to engage health professionals in thousands of peer-patient conversations in the same way that health professionals moderate patient conversations in face-to-face patient support groups. To address this challenge I propose developing methods and techniques that maximize the use of already available health professionals' expertise online for online health communities and help patients improve self-efficacy and self-care toward managing chronic disease.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Type
Research Scientist Development Award - Research & Training (K01)
Project #
7K01LM011980-02
Application #
8929297
Study Section
Biomedical Library and Informatics Review Committee (BLR)
Program Officer
Vanbiervliet, Alan
Project Start
2014-09-28
Project End
2017-09-27
Budget Start
2015-09-28
Budget End
2016-09-27
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2015
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of California San Diego
Department
Internal Medicine/Medicine
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
804355790
City
La Jolla
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
92093
Bi, Chongguang; Xing, Guoliang; Hao, Tian et al. (2017) FamilyLog: A Mobile System for Monitoring Family Mealtime Activities. Proc IEEE Int Conf Pervasive Comput Commun 2017:21-30
VanDam, Courtland; Kanthawala, Shaheen; Pratt, Wanda et al. (2017) Detecting clinically related content in online patient posts. J Biomed Inform 75:96-106
Marmor, Rebecca A; Dai, Wenrui; Jiang, Xiaoqian et al. (2017) Increase in contralateral prophylactic mastectomy conversation online unrelated to decision-making. J Surg Res 218:253-260
Huh, Jina; Marmor, Rebecca; Jiang, Xiaoqian (2016) Lessons Learned for Online Health Community Moderator Roles: A Mixed-Methods Study of Moderators Resigning From WebMD Communities. J Med Internet Res 18:e247
Huh, Jina; Kwon, Bum Chul; Kim, Sung-Hee et al. (2016) Personas in online health communities. J Biomed Inform 63:212-225
Nath, Chinmoy; Huh, Jina; Adupa, Abhishek Kalyan et al. (2016) Website Sharing in Online Health Communities: A Descriptive Analysis. J Med Internet Res 18:e11
Park, Albert; Hartzler, Andrea L; Huh, Jina et al. (2016) ""How Did We Get Here?"": Topic Drift in Online Health Discussions. J Med Internet Res 18:e284
Kwon, Bum Chul; Kim, Sung-Hee; Lee, Sukwon et al. (2016) VisOHC: Designing Visual Analytics for Online Health Communities. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph 22:71-80
Shin, Jaemyung; Huh, Jina; Kang, Bumsoo et al. (2016) BeUpright: Posture Correction Using Relational Norm Intervention. Proc SIGCHI Conf Hum Factor Comput Syst 2016:6040-6052
Kanthawala, Shaheen; Vermeesch, Amber; Given, Barbara et al. (2016) Answers to Health Questions: Internet Search Results Versus Online Health Community Responses. J Med Internet Res 18:e95

Showing the most recent 10 out of 16 publications