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Using the Google™ Search Engine for Health Information: Is There a Problem? Case Study: Supplements for Cancer.

ABSTRACT: We assessed the quality of online health and nutrition information using a Google™ search on "supplements for cancer". Search results were scored using the Health Information Quality Index (HIQI), a quality-rating tool consisting of 12 objective criteria related to website domain, lack of commercial aspects, and authoritative nature of the health and nutrition information provided. Possible scores ranged from 0 (lowest) to 12 ("perfect" or highest quality). After eliminating irrelevant results, the remaining 160 search results had median and mean scores of 8. One-quarter of the results were of high quality (score of 10-12). There was no correlation between high-quality scores and early appearance in the sequence of search results, where results are presumably more visible. Also, 496 advertisements, over twice the number of search results, appeared. We conclude that the Google™ search engine may have shortcomings when used to obtain information on dietary supplements and cancer.

SUBMITTER: Cai HC

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8059196 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Using the Google™ Search Engine for Health Information: Is There a Problem? Case Study: Supplements for Cancer.

Cai Hannah C HC King Leanne E LE Dwyer Johanna T JT

Current developments in nutrition 20210203 2

We assessed the quality of online health and nutrition information using a Google™ search on "supplements for cancer". Search results were scored using the Health Information Quality Index (HIQI), a quality-rating tool consisting of 12 objective criteria related to website domain, lack of commercial aspects, and authoritative nature of the health and nutrition information provided. Possible scores ranged from 0 (lowest) to 12 ("perfect" or highest quality). After eliminating irrelevant results, ...[more]

PMID: 33937613

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Some of the temporal variations and clock-like rhythms that govern several different health-related behaviors can be traced in near real-time with the help of search engine data. This is especially useful when studying phenomena where little or no traditional data exist. One specific area where traditional data are incomplete is the study of diurnal mood variations, or daily changes in individuals' overall mood state in relation to depression-like symptoms. OBJECTIVE:The objective of this exploratory study was to analyze diurnal variations for interest in depression on the Web to discover hourly patterns of depression interest and help seeking. METHODS:Hourly query volume data for 6 depression-related queries in Finland were downloaded from Google Trends in March 2017. A continuous wavelet transform (CWT) was applied to the hourly data to focus on the diurnal variation. Longer term trends and noise were also eliminated from the data to extract the diurnal variation for each query term. An analysis of variance was conducted to determine the statistical differences between the distributions of each hour. Data were also trichotomized and analyzed in 3 time blocks to make comparisons between different time periods during the day. RESULTS:Search volumes for all depression-related query terms showed a unimodal regular pattern during the 24 hours of the day. All queries feature clear peaks during the nighttime hours around 11 PM to 4 AM and troughs between 5 AM and 10 PM. In the means of the CWT-reconstructed data, the differences in nighttime and daytime interest are evident, with a difference of 37.3 percentage points (pp) for the term "Depression," 33.5 pp for "Masennustesti," 30.6 pp for "Masennus," 12.8 pp for "Depression test," 12.0 pp for "Masennus testi," and 11.8 pp for "Masennus oireet." The trichotomization showed peaks in the first time block (00.00 AM-7.59 AM) for all 6 terms. The search volumes then decreased significantly during the second time block (8.00 AM-3.59 PM) for the terms "Masennus oireet" (P<.001), "Masennus" (P=.001), "Depression" (P=.005), and "Depression test" (P=.004). Higher search volumes for the terms "Masennus" (P=.14), "Masennustesti" (P=.07), and "Depression test" (P=.10) were present between the second and third time blocks. CONCLUSIONS:Help seeking for depression has clear diurnal patterns, with significant rise in depression-related query volumes toward the evening and night. Thus, search engine query data support the notion of the evening-worse pattern in diurnal mood variation. Information on the timely nature of depression-related interest on an hourly level could improve the chances for early intervention, which is beneficial for positive health outcomes.

Project description:Monitoring cropland phenology from optical satellite data remains a challenging task due to the influence of clouds and atmospheric artifacts. Therefore, measures need to be taken to overcome these challenges and gain better knowledge of crop dynamics. The arrival of cloud computing platforms such as Google Earth Engine (GEE) has enabled us to propose a Sentinel-2 (S2) phenology end-to-end processing chain. To achieve this, the following pipeline was implemented: (1) the building of hybrid Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) retrieval models of crop traits optimized with active learning, (2) implementation of these models on GEE (3) generation of spatiotemporally continuous maps and time series of these crop traits with the use of gap-filling through GPR fitting, and finally, (4) calculation of land surface phenology (LSP) metrics such as the start of season (SOS) or end of season (EOS). Overall, from good to high performance was achieved, in particular for the estimation of canopy-level traits such as leaf area index (LAI) and canopy chlorophyll content, with normalized root mean square errors (NRMSE) of 9% and 10%, respectively. By means of the GPR gap-filling time series of S2, entire tiles were reconstructed, and resulting maps were demonstrated over an agricultural area in Castile and Leon, Spain, where crop calendar data were available to assess the validity of LSP metrics derived from crop traits. In addition, phenology derived from the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was used as reference. NDVI not only proved to be a robust indicator for the calculation of LSP metrics, but also served to demonstrate the good phenology quality of the quantitative trait products. Thanks to the GEE framework, the proposed workflow can be realized anywhere in the world and for any time window, thus representing a shift in the satellite data processing paradigm. We anticipate that the produced LSP metrics can provide meaningful insights into crop seasonal patterns in a changing environment that demands adaptive agricultural production.

Project description:BackgroundAIDS, caused by HIV, is a leading cause of mortality in Africa. HIV/AIDS is among the greatest public health challenges confronting health authorities, with South Africa having the greatest prevalence of the disease in the world. There is little research into how Africans meet their health information needs on HIV/AIDS online, and this research gap impacts programming and educational responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.ObjectiveThis paper reports on how, in general, interest in the search terms "HIV" and "AIDS" mirrors the increase in people living with HIV and the decline in AIDS cases in South Africa.MethodsData on search trends for HIV and AIDS for South Africa were found using the search terms "HIV" and "AIDS" (categories: health, web search) on Google Trends. This was compared with data on estimated adults and children living with HIV, and AIDS-related deaths in South Africa, from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, and also with search interest in the topics "HIV" and "AIDS" on Wikipedia Afrikaans, the most developed local language Wikipedia service in South Africa. Nonparametric statistical tests were conducted to support the trends and associations identified in the data.ResultsGoogle Trends shows a statistically significant decline (P<.001) in search interest for AIDS relative to HIV in South Africa. This trend mirrors progress on the ground in South Africa and is significantly associated (P<.001) with a decline in AIDS-related deaths and people living longer with HIV. This trend was also replicated on Wikipedia Afrikaans, where there was a greater interest in HIV than AIDS.ConclusionsThis statistically significant (P<.001) association between interest in the search terms "HIV" and "AIDS" in South Africa (2004-2019) and the number of people living with HIV and AIDS in the country (2004-2019) might be an indicator that multilateral efforts at combating HIV/AIDS-particularly through awareness raising and behavioral interventions in South Africa-are bearing fruit, and this is not only evident on the ground, but is also reflected in the online information seeking on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We acknowledge the limitation that in studying the association between Google search interests on HIV/AIDS and cases/deaths, causal relationships should not be drawn due to the limitations of the data.

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Using the Google™ Search Engine for Health Information: Is There a Problem? Case Study: Supplements for Cancer.

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Using the Google™ Search Engine for Health Information: Is There a Problem? Case Study: Supplements for Cancer.

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