Identifying Research-Active Specialists at an Academic Medical Center: A Case Study.

How might one identify, via publicly accessible websites, research-active specialists at an academic medical center? As a case study, health-informatics specialists were identified at two academic medical centers: University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, and University of Maryland-Baltimore. Four types of data about researchers were sought: frequency of publication, frequency of citations, money from grants, and patents. Based on frequency of published articles, one center favored bioinformatics and cardiology, whereas the other produced more results in nursing and radiology.

Knowledge-guided mutation in classification rules for autism treatment efficacy.

Data mining methods in biomedical research might benefit by combining genetic algorithms with domain-specific knowledge. The objective of this research is to show how the evolution of treatment rules for autism might be guided. The semantic distance between two concepts in the taxonomy is measured by the number of relationships separating the concepts in the taxonomy.

Patient data access and online sleep apnea communities.

Purpose: To show that some patients with sleep apnea on positive airway pressure therapy show an interest in obtaining further monitoring data with the support of online patient communities.

Methods: A case study is presented in which a patient struggles to comply with his therapy and interacts with an online patient community. Next, a content analysis is described in which sleep apnea online communities are identified, an indexing language for patients' messages is developed, and patient messages are indexed into concepts from the indexing language.

Retractions, press releases and newspaper coverage.

Objectives: To explore how often newspapers cover the retraction of a medical journal article and whether newspaper coverage corresponds with the appearance of a press release about the retraction.

Methods: Fifty citations were identified in PubMed that had been indexed with the Medical Subject Heading 'Retracted Publication'. Next, the archives of LexisNexis's 'Major Newspapers' and EurekAlert's press releases were searched to find references to those retracted publications.

Entry requirements and membership homogeneity in online patient groups.

The objective was to explore a relationship between the economics of religion and the attributes of online patient groups by testing the hypotheses that (1) the harsher the entry requirements to an online patient group, the more active its members are; and (2) membership homogeneity in a given group is reflected in the educational level of group members. Online groups were randomly chosen from the 'Yahoo groups' category of 'Illnesses'. The hypothesis about entry requirements was narrowed by defining those requirements as either 'Open', 'Register', or 'Closed'.

Characterizing cancer information systems.

The objective is to determine the extent to which information systems (IS) for cancer are unique and necessary. Via an analysis of Medical Subject Headings used to index relevant literature and other bibliometric techniques, cancer IS are compared and contrasted with IS of other specialties. Cancer IS are relatively little discussed and primarily connect radiation equipment with the radiation oncology staff.

A case study of a retracted systematic review on interactive health communication applications: impact on media, scientists, and patients.

Background: In October 2004, a flawed systematic review entitled "Interactive Health Communication Applications for People with Chronic Disease" was published in the Cochrane Library, accompanied by several press releases in which authors warned the public of the negative health consequences of interactive health communication applications, including the Internet. Within days of the review's publication, scientists identified major coding errors and other methodological problems that invalidated the principal conclusions of the study and led to a retraction. While the original study results and their negative conclusions were widely publicized in the media, the retraction seemed to go unnoticed.

Obstructive sleep apnea and head and neck neoplasms.

Objective: To elaborate the relationship between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and head and neck neoplasms (HNN).

Study Design And Setting: A systematic review of the MEDLINE literature.

Results: Thirty of 34 articles indexed under OSA and HNN were about neoplasms that presented first as OSA.

The aging of a clinical information system.

The senescence of a clinical information system is more likely to have administrative than technical bases. Supporting this claim is a case study of one aging oncology information system. The case study is qualitative, as behooves the subject matter.

Comparing HIPAA practices in two multi-hospital systems.

The comparison of HIPAA compliance efforts at two multi-hospital networks (Children's Health System and Carilion Health System) suggests a framework for classifying practices and for facilitating the integration of further case studies into a national library of HIPAA practices.