Finding the Patient's Voice Using Big Data: Analysis of Users' Health-Related Concerns in the ChaCha Question-and-Answer Service (2009-2012).

ABSTRACT:

Background

The development of effective health care and public health interventions requires a comprehensive understanding of the perceptions, concerns, and stated needs of health care consumers and the public at large. Big datasets from social media and question-and-answer services provide insight into the public's health concerns and priorities without the financial, temporal, and spatial encumbrances of more traditional community-engagement methods and may prove a useful starting point for public-engagement health research (infodemiology).

Objective

The objective of our study was to describe user characteristics and health-related queries of the ChaCha question-and-answer platform, and discuss how these data may be used to better understand the perceptions, concerns, and

SUBMITTER: Priest C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4805858 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature