Abstract
Social media is reshaping the health care in this modern world due to technological innovations. This paper presents information about the social media applications that can be used in context of terminal illness. It provides a user scenario for making the context easier to understand. It gives information about building mashups for providing information on terminal illness and integrating social media applications. Finally, it discusses on some key points like objectives of application, user participation along with pros and cons of the application.
Introduction
Social media is re-engineering the way doctors and patients interact in this era of internet. Social media provides powerful and popular cost effective mass communication across healthcare industry from large hospitals to patient support groups through instant messaging, weblogs and micro blogging. (Hawn 2009). Today information goes viral and spreads like electronic wildfire with emergence of social media. There is lots of information on the internet (World Wide Web) and it is quiet cumbersome task for user to find the relevant information. To solve this problem, many browsing methods and systems that apply adaptive approaches can be used to fetch the information of user interest. Semantic mash-up is one of such approach where collective browsing technique is used to provide the supportive knowledge according to the relevance. Semantic mash-up scheme can be used to check data collected by multiple Open APIs, help users to determine which part of information to select and to integrate the heterogeneous information available over the internet. A co-browsing platform can be used that can exchange bookmarks and measure whether the semantic mashups scheme make a positive influence on improving the performance of the co-browsing process. Navigation on the web is considered to be one of the most time-consuming tasks. Mash-up is an alternative navigation way of supporting collaborations for the users in real time. It provides a way as how to select and rank the search results, how to choose the best searching method and how to make an appropriate sequence of queries, as well as providing the multiple users with their own set of knowledge. It improves the web-searching on the internet. It is done using recognizing the current contexts of each user and comparing the contexts between two users. Mashups are used to exploit and enrich the recommendations for a user with additional information from various information sources. (Jung 2012)
Role of Mashups
Social networks have influenced human history since the dawn of time. Information exchange via various networks was slow and limited to diffusion through family, friends, and local communities till the internet evolution took place. Today information goes viral and spreads like electronic wildfire. Each person is only vaguely aware of his or her friends’ friends and the ensuing global network to which all are connected although everyone is part of a social network.(Marcum 2011).
Social media applications like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter which are very popular helps in healthcare by providing mass information transfer. There are several other social media applications focusing especially on healthcare and terminal illness. Based on extensive web search, we came across following social networking sites designed especially for healthcare like Bits, Inspire, Health 2.0, Diabetic Connect, patientslikeme and Disaboom.
A mashup is a Web integration technology that enables the user to assemble multiple applications into a single piece in order to achieve a certain goal. IBM has come up with a mashup for the patient or the user at home or at [the] office. Set of tools would help user manage his data, collaborate with others, and provide his knowledge to other patients on the Web[1].
Based upon this idea we came up with something more special and useful mashup application to support mass communication among several patients suffering from terminal illness, doctors and pharmacists at a single place using one application “Terminal Illness and Social media”.
User Scenario
In this study, we propose an alternative navigation for supporting collaborations among multiple users in real time in contrast to the single user-centered approaches. Users can exchange knowledge and resources with their like-minded neighbors while searching for information on the web through Collaborative browsing approach. Online communication between several users helps to acquire not only relevance resources, but also many types of user experiences (or heuristics).
The web has problematic characteristics especially navigation on the web is considered to be one of the most time-consuming tasks. Mash-up and co-browsing are alternatives in the navigation to support collaborations among the users in real time. It provides way as how to select and rank
the search results, how to choose the best searching method and how to make an appropriate sequence of queries, as well as providing the multiple users with their own set of knowledge. It improves the web-searching on the internet. Mashups are used to exploit and enrich the recommendations for a user with additional information from various information sources.
In this case, we are considering that a user wants information about terminal illness. This mash up is going to provide the complete information about terminal illnesses along with respective doctors whom the user can consult, check other patient opinions about disease and treatments through healthcare social media, check review about drugs and also find several useful information about drugs from pharmacists and other drug manufacturers.
Our Mashup “Terminal Illness and Social media” in real time helps the patients suffering from terminal Illness to know completely right from disease information till latest researches happening in this direction till assisting for consultation with doctors and pharmacists to know about disease and drugs. It also enables mass communication among several patients to share their ideas online through healthcare social media applications.
Technical implementation
Mashup is a web page or a web application used widely to combine data and presentation or functionalities from various sources to create new services. Lots of technologies are available for conducting data presentation and user interactions using mashups. We used some of the technologies like HTML/XHTML, Asynchronous JavaScript, CSS and XML (Ajax). API services are also implemented in the web-base case technology.
For this webpage we are implementing rich web applications (RWA) by developing it to call available APIs for collecting various types of information from multiple sources. That will extract the only information that will be helpful for the users’ searching tasks on the web. This will make users searching tasks on web easier.
Implemented Mashup Details with screenshots
Terminal Illness and Social media is a real time mashups built using real time websites to help the people suffering from terminal Illness to know different kinds of information and also enables mass communication among several patients to share their ideas online through social media applications.It also helps users to connect to doctors and also to pharmacists online for consultation and also to know information about drugs.
It helps patients, doctors and also pharmacists to find relevant information which suits their needs accordingly from a single mashup we built. An overview of the features we implemented in our Terminal Illness and Social media are explained below :-
The Home page of Terminal Illness and Social Media consists of following main categories namely Terminal Illness, Social Media, Doctors, Pharmacists, Medicines, Contact.It is linked to 3 popular social networks namely Facebook ,Twitter and Youtube.
- 1. Terminal Illness
Terminal Illness consists of different sub categories in the list on the left side of the home page like:-
- Health: Provides advice and support related information to help patients suffering from terminal illness. This tab helps family and friends to deal with the emotions and practical concerns involved.
- Help The Middle Class: Provides News, updates and Information about the monetary assistance and other benefits available for suffering patients.
- Diseases- Provides complete information about 4 critical terminal illnesses affecting several humans across world within sub links.
- AIDS: Provides information about AIDS disease and latest developments happening in world.
- Cancer: Get all Science Daily’s Cancer headlines automatically delivered to patients every day through free subscription.
- Ebola hemorrhagic fever: Specializes in reviews of clinical effectiveness research and provides easy-to-read summaries for consumers as well as full technical reports about this disease.
- Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome : Lesch-Nyhan syndrome is an inheritable disorder that affects how the body builds and breaks down purines. Provides complete information about happenings in this field.
- Disease Info
- A-Z information about diseases: Health line’s Learning Centres’ provide comprehensive information on 1000+ most common diseases and conditions
We have created 6 tabs in Home page to provide wide variety of information for different kind of users:-
- News: This link gives information about the research and some latest updates about diseases and medicines.
- Terminal Illness: A terminal illness is an infection or disease which is considered ultimately fatal or incurable. This link provides complete information about the prevailing terminal illness.
- Health Directory: Provides accurate education and decision support resources to different people like patients, doctors and pharmacists.
- Supporting Terminal: Provides information on how to react to situation when our loved ones get affected with illness.
- Movies: Movies about terminal illness for patients and their families to gain confidence
- Tips and services: Provides wide range of health tips for people
- 2. Social Media
Social Media is the second tab on main screen which consist of 3 sub categories as follows:-
- BlogSpot
ü Health Care Blog: A blog for information about what is on healthcare horizon.
ü Healthcare Law Blog: A good example of health 2.0. A unique approach to solve health care problems through technology and social networking.
ü Healthcare Social Networks: The number of niche social networking sites dedicated to healthcare professionals and consumers.
- Nature Biotechnology: Collection of journals in the field of biotechnology and research articles of diseases and their medicines.
We have created 9 tabs in this Social Media page for connecting people from across the globe:-
- Bits: A social networks for patients suffering from several illnesses
- Inspire: Inspire builds online health and wellness communities for patients and caregivers, in partnership with national patient advocacy organizations, and helps life science organizations connect with these highly engaged populations.
- Health2.0: Health 2.0 holds conferences around the world.
- Diabetic Connect: Fresh information and real support. Fuelled by an active, caring community.
- Patients like Me: It gives information about the patient reviews.
- Disaboom: Disaboom provides people with disabilities the answers, solutions, and connections they need for living their life to the fullest.
Videos at bottom which provides an insight into lives of people suffering from some diseases
- Teenage Cancer: Video is about teenage cancer.
- Terminal Illness: Video is about terminal illness
- Interviews: This video is about terminal illness interview.
- 3. Doctors
“Doctors” is the on the third tab on the main screen which consists of 2 subcategories in the list on left side of page:-
- AskaPatient: When you need to know if a medication really works, why not ask a Patient?
- Mayo Clinic: One of the trusted website which provides information for doctors from the hospital.
We have created 2 tabs in the Doctors page which are,
Terminal Illness Answers: Medical professionals strive to identify and treat diseases and infections in their early stages
Physician Reference: A complete guide for physicians about drug with information provided directly by drug manufacturers.
- Pharmacists:
Pharmacist is the fourth tab which consists of 4 sub categories,
- DrugLib: Comprehensive drug database organized by relevance to specific drugs.
- Drugs.com: Contains drug information online.
- DrugLib.com: An index of drug ratings, reviews and comments submitted by patients and caregivers.
- Physicians Help Desk: Leading Drug resource for over 65years.
We have created 2 tabs in the Pharmacists page which are,
v Drug details with therapeutic indication: Provides information about Open Data Drug and Drug Target details
v Drug databases: The Drug Bank database is a blended bioinformatics and chemical informatics resource that combines detailed drug composition.
- Medicines:
Medicines is the fourth tab which consist of 4 subcategories,
- Medline Plus: Medline Plus is the National Institutes of Health’s Web site for patients and their families and friends.
- Medication Guides: Medication Guides are paper handouts that come with many prescription medicines which are made available online.
- Safe Medication: Trusted web source of drug information.
- WebMD: One can search drugs and medicines from A-Z on this website.
We have created 3 tabs in this Medicine page which are,
v Online Med review: Provides complete user reviews and opinions directly without any modifications about drugs.
v Drug Ratings: Site where people like provide real, independent ratings, reviews and recommendations for prescription drugs, medications and pharmaceuticals.
v Drug Reviews: Community which shares drug reviews in online drug ratings forum.
6. Contact:
“Contacts” is the last page which consists of the contact details.
The complete coding used for our mashup creation is present in Appendix.
User participation
User participation is most important factor for any application development as the success of web applications is dependent on the potential users of the system. User participation can be assured by providing to the point information with lots of details as the satisfied user will advertise for the web-page. According to Terry and Standing(Terry and Standing 2004), potential users are diverse in all respects, ethnically, culturally as well as geographically. Also, they are diverse in their ability to use computers. Traditional internally focused information systems are developed for a clearly defined set of known users, either in-house or business partners. The development may be undertaken in-house or by external parties, but either way, the user community is clearly identifiable.
According to Ben Barden, the following 7 points enhances user participation[2].
1) Enabling simple and quick user login or registrations to access applications.
2) Making the web application/system easily available to all.
3) Showing some animations and colorful pictures to draw attention of many users.
4) Highlighting the new and updated features of application like recent posts, blogs etc..
5) Talk to the users to know what they expect out of a system
6) Running member polls about the updated features of the website/application to get to know the user interests.
7) Rewarding the top contributors to encourage many users to come up with interesting ideas and suggestions.
Objectives and Benefits
The main objective of “Terminal Illness and Social Media” is to promote healthcare marketing strategy online by building strong customer relationships.
Patients are passive in the traditional healthcare process. Usually they initiate the treatment process after identifying some abnormal conditions and then let their physicians lead them towards successful treatment. With the development of the Internet, new means of communication between patients and their caregivers have begun through mashups. Mashups provides several benefits to users. They are as follows-
- Patients can find several updates online about their illness
- Interact with different people like doctors, pharmacists and other similar patients from across the globe.
- Helps for integration of heterogeneous services enabling the management of increasing volumes of data and allows the user convenient access to the data.
- Helps users belonging to disease centric communities use such communities to share information, experiences, and provide psychological support. Currently, such communities are based on free and unorganized platforms, such as wikis or forums, and are mainly used to exchange information and knowledge. But the mashups change the way communication takes place.
Potential problems/issues
The mashup methodology and its potential for the healthcare domain are clear, yet the approach and technology needs exploration (Greenshpan, Kveler et al. 2009).Some of the potential
– Mashup composition and design: Even though the mashup approach empowers users with the ability to design their applications according to changing needs. A large number of applications and additional knowledge about the ways they are connected makes users to benefit from this cumulative experience for their specific requirements. This leads to lots of application without proper relevance that will make tough for individual to select the good ones.
– Privacy and security: Healthcare data must be highly secure, especially when maintained on the Internet and shared with other individuals, mashup components, and services. This is an alarming issue that will require the development of secure mechanisms for communication. Role-based access control mechanism will have to be considered and implemented due to the variety of roles involved in every scenario (e.g., patient, doctor, hospital, pharmacy),each with its own requirements.
– Quality assurance: Misleading data might lead to life-threatening results as the quality of information and knowledge in the health domain is acute. Therefore, it is very important that mechanisms controlling the quality of data and services being offered must be developed for mashups.
– Flow and process management: Complexity of Processes in the health domain system makes monitoring, navigation, and intervention in the flow difficult for novice users.
Conclusions
In the rapidly changing world, all individuals are gaining more control over all aspects of their life. Especially many people are nowadays becoming more health conscious and like to take their own care and follow their treatment process. They have a better understanding of their medical condition and do not rely entirely on just a single physician for all their health needs. The IT world encourages this process /methodology by increasing exposure to excellent variety of information databases, healthcare knowledge domains, and services. These kind of great opportunities increase the demand for supporting tools and software components. In this report, we proposed mashups as a leading technology for patients facing the emergent needs in the health from the terminal illness. We have discussed most of the aspects and demonstrated how mashups could assist in coping with them. But these technologies are still not sufficient to overcome the enormous number of applications on the Web today.
