This document builds on previous NHS Digital guidance on digital inclusion for health and social care.
Use it to design and implement inclusive digital approaches and technologies, which are complementary to non-digital services and support.
Josiah Richardson is a Senior Library Assistant at an NHS trust, whilst also doing the Level 3 Library, Information and Archive Services Assistant CILIP NVQ. In this case study, Josiah discusses how AI has simplified and sped up reporting and increased his knowledge of Excel.
'As KNOWvember comes into view once more, here at Pennine Care we have been reflecting on our activities for 2022.' Looks at a range of knowledge management activities including offering alerts based on evidence searches, using the KM tool, and established Teams channels to facilitate communities of practice.
The findings can inform future research and practice on both individual and societal levels:
During times of uncertainty, mental health practitioners should actively educate their clients about the potential consequences of excessive health information-seeking. This can include behavioural interventions, such as controlled/limited exposure to news and social media at specific times of day and/or breaks from information overload.
Moreover, the study also supports the need to promote social media literacy skills to help young people and adults critically evaluate the information they encounter and discern credible sources vs. misinformation.
Practitioners can also encourage individuals to nurture their social support networks, as well as their self-care routines. Positive interactions can limit and counterbalance the negative impact of excessive information-seeking.
Evidence surveillance was guided by practical considerations of efficiency and sustainability. A single PubMed search covering all guideline topics, limited to systematic reviews and randomised trials, is run monthly. The search retrieves about 400 records a month of which a sixth are triaged to the guideline panels for further consideration. Evaluations with Epistemonikos and the Cochrane Stroke Trials Register demonstrated the robustness of adopting this more restrictive approach. Collaborating with the guideline team in designing, implementing and evaluating the surveillance is essential for optimising the approach.
This study adds to our understanding of key topics in social science research on COVID-19. The automated literature analysis presented is particularly useful for librarians and information specialists keen to explore the role and contributions of social science topics in the context of pandemics. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
People had longer attention span for video-based patient info than for text, spent longer (so less efficient) but felt better informed afterwards. I know we don't do patient info at the moment but I thought this was worth putting on one side (i.e. wiki) for future reference.
Evaluation using two widely accepted tools shows that most websites related to COVID-19 are reliable and useful for physicians, researchers and the public.
Inspired by BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs the Libraries at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals ran an initiative called Castaway Books. It's worth looking at their experience - engagement started well, but tailed off later. Keep this as evidence in case we want to trial something similar?
In November, we held our inaugural gathering, welcoming 20 colleagues from various NHS trusts. Included as a reminder / inspiration in case anyone from our team is going to this, or will consider going.
We developed a highly accurate, simple, transportable, scalable method to identify publications in PubMed and Scopus authored by anesthesiology faculty. Manual checking and faculty feedback are required because not all names can be disambiguated, and some references are missed. This process can greatly reduce the burden of curating a list of faculty publications. The methodology applies to other academic departments that track faculty publications.
Conclusion: The results of this study show heightened complexity in ChatGPT-generated SCI texts, surpassing optimal health communication readability. ChatGPT currently cannot substitute comprehensive medical consultations. Enhancing text quality could be attainable through dependence on credible sources, the establishment of a scientific board, and collaboration with expert teams. Addressing these concerns could improve text accessibility, empowering patients and facilitating informed decision-making in SCI.
This blogpost looks at a Knowledge Specialist as a point of contact for three Research Units within this Trust. Any use or ideas for working with R&I, or promoting LKS services to them?
Results: The 100 systematic review articles contained 453 database searches. Only 22 (4.9%) database searches reported all six PRISMA-S items. Forty-seven (10.4%) database searches could be reproduced within 10% of the number of results from the original search; 6 searches differed by more than 1000% between the originally reported number of results and the reproduction. Only one systematic review article provided the necessary search details to be fully reproducible.
In summary, despite errors and miss rates with the current platform, systematic literature search using AI appears very promising, eliminating hours of human labor while improving search quality. As AI technology continuously evolves, efforts to refine and improve AI-based literature search platforms should be continued.
An assistant librarian was seconded for two days a week to support the Patient Experience Team. This item shows how she worked to update policies. The LKS is now being recommended across the Trust to support this work.
One for the Evidence wiki?
Short, pithy, and practical article about the uses, and pitfalls, of AI. It includes some helpful suggestions about how to start using it, and some of the issues to look out for.
The literature analysis reveals diverse applications of ChatGPT in medical libraries, including aiding users in finding relevant medical information, answering queries, providing recommendations and facilitating access to resources. Potential challenges and ethical considerations associated with ChatGPT in this context are also highlighted.
The library includes 13 research topics, with assessment as the most prevalent. It also notes recognized experts, including van der Vleuten, ten Cate, and Norman. The key medical education research topics identified and included in the library align with what others have identified as trends in the literature. Selected topics, including workplace-based learning, equity, diversity, and inclusion, physician wellbeing and burnout, and social accountability, are emerging. Once transformed into an open educational resource, clinician-educators and medical education researchers can use and contribute to the functional library.
In this article, Christine Urquhart discusses some different research designs, and different research methods that may help students and practitioners find useful answers to questions about professional practice beyond the standard survey. Researchers could consider research designs such as quasi-experimental techniques, controlled before-after studies, and interrupted time series. The basic principles of such methods are outlined and some examples cited. Other research techniques outlined include those that research subjects might find more interesting to do, such as conjoint analysis and vignettes.
This column will discuss how to navigate searchRxiv to find, reuse, and cite published search strategies, as well as the process of depositing search strategies.
To educate our campus’s health sciences audience and wider community on these topics, we have developed a range of instruction about visual health misinformation. We describe our strategies and provide suggestions for implementing visual misinformation programming for a variety of audiences.
The purpose of this commentary is to provide useful guidance on conducting rigorous searches of the literature that inform the design and execution of research. Guidance for less formal literature reviews can be adapted from best practices utilized within the formalized field of evidence synthesis. Additionally, researchers can draw on guidance from PRESS (Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies) to engage in self-evaluation of their search strategies. Finally, developing an awareness of common pitfalls when designing literature searches can provide researchers with confidence that their research is designed to fill clearly articulated gaps in knowledge.
While web analytical tools (e.g. Google Analytics) used by such websites can provide descriptive measures of users, there is a disconnection between this data and the current understanding of health information-seeking behaviour. In this work, we leverage a theoretical model to interpret the Google Analytics data. Drawn on the visualisation of user behaviours based on this model, our research shows that better website design can be informed, and the evaluation of health websites can be performed on the basis of different user profiles.
Online knowledge sharing provides pragmatic and timely strategies for health professionals in the UK to apply research evidence to their practice. Our study provides generalisable, practical insights in how to develop and implement a knowledge sharing platform.
In this article, Christine Urquhart discusses some different research designs, and different research methods that may help students and practitioners find useful answers to questions about professional practice beyond the standard survey. Researchers could consider research designs such as quasi-experimental techniques, controlled before-after studies, and interrupted time series. The basic principles of such methods are outlined and some examples cited. Other research techniques outlined include those that research subjects might find more interesting to do, such as conjoint analysis and vignettes
Positioned as a review, our study elucidates the applications of ChatGPT in medical libraries and discusses relevant considerations. The integration of ChatGPT into medical library services holds promise for enhancing information retrieval and user experience, benefiting library users and the broader medical community.
Evidence-based practice is vital to nursing, and health and social care, but research suggests it is less widespread than it should be. One reason may be that front-line practitioners do not always have the support, time and knowledge to search for and review evidence.
To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
Results
We included 79 studies and identified themes, including question realism, answer reliability, answer utility, clinical specialism, systems, usability, and evaluation methods. Clinicians’ questions used to train and evaluate QA systems were restricted to certain sources, types and complexity levels. No system communicated confidence levels in the answers or sources. Many studies suffered from high risks of bias and applicability concerns. Only 8 studies completely satisfied any criterion for clinical utility, and only 7 reported user evaluations. Most systems were built with limited input from clinicians.
Discussion
While machine learning methods have led to increased accuracy, most studies imperfectly reflected real-world healthcare information needs. Key research priorities include developing more realistic healthcare QA datasets and considering the reliability of answer sources, rather than merely focusing on accuracy.
Four main themes related to how youth search online emerged: mind-set shapes the search process; external factors shape the search process; key attributes of helpful information; and cues affecting trustworthiness of online information. Findings can inform the development of youth-friendly online mental health information that is perceived as helpful and trustworthy by youth. Ensuring youth have access to quality online mental health information, accessible to how they search for it, is critical to the mental health and development of youth.
Results: Thematic analysis revealed three themes: tablets are convenient to access online information and older adults reported technical, security concerns, emotional and cognitive challenges regarding use of smart tablets. Older adults also requested one-on-one support, assistance, and topic specific learning for future training sessions.
Conclusions: Future studies should focus on providing detailed, clear instructions at an acceptable pace for older adults.
Notably, from their initial exposure, students associated e-books primarily with a source of new information, rather than as a time-saving tool. Although e-books were perceived as easy to use, this aspect did not strongly influence students' attitudes and intentions to use them as much as their perceived usefulness did. The study reveals that students, particularly in social sciences, have long viewed e-books as a vital technology for exploratory knowledge acquisition. While they perceive e-books as easy to use, this perception likely stems from their habitual use for managing learning activities, rather than from recognizing any added value of the technology itself.
Interview and survey findings highlighted several strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to support future development of online knowledge sharing platforms.
Discussion
Online knowledge sharing supports six ‘pillars’ of successful research and innovation partnerships. This requires distributed forms of leadership and linking of different knowledge sharing strategies, and careful combination of platforms with communities of practice.
Conclusion
Online knowledge sharing provides pragmatic and timely strategies for health professionals in the UK to apply research evidence to their practice. Our study provides generalisable, practical insights in how to develop and implement a knowledge sharing platform.
Today a perceived lasting legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic is that more information literacy instruction is happening online than pre-pandemic, including ongoing adoption of synchronous modes of instruction in course-based and co-curricular contexts, and sustained integration of asynchronous learning resources either in standalone formats or as fundamental elements in what is described as a growing adoption of a more modular, scalable approach to information literacy instruction. At the same time, the role of in-person information literacy instruction has by no means been forgotten, with all OCUL libraries offering a majority of instruction this way by Fall 2022, when pandemic restrictions eased up. However, an ongoing legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic has been lasting changes in how librarians teach, and the nature of collaborative partnerships at work in shaping this information literacy instruction, to increasingly draw from a broader range of modalities to offer students a more flexible learning environment.
In this editorial, Anthea Sutton and Veronica Parisi reflect on ChatGPT, how it may contribute to systematic searching, and provide their overview of some recent training they attended on ChatGPT, AI and systematic literature reviews.
NHS Knowledge and Library Services Community of Practice joins the Green Libraries Campaign to support the campaign's growth and evolution as for new green intiatives and activities in 2024 onwards. News release. We have a sustainability action on this year's delivery plan - will this help?
'This blog post details our experience organising a series of Randomised Coffee Trials within the Yorkshire (YOHHLNet) and Northern Health Libraries Networks.' Participants are health library staff.
When screening full-text literature using highly reliable prompts, GPT-4's performance was more robust, reaching “human-like” levels. Although our findings indicate that, currently, substantial caution should be exercised if LLMs are being used to conduct systematic reviews, they also offer preliminary evidence that, for certain review tasks delivered under specific conditions, LLMs can rival human performance.
ChatGPT provides different answers to similar questions based on the prompts, and patients may not have expertise in prompting ChattPT to elicit a best answer. (Prompting large language models has been shown to be a skill that can improve). Of greater concern, ChatGPT fails to provide sources or references for its answers. At present ChatGPT cannot be relied upon to address patient questions; in the future, ChatGPT will improve. Today, AI requires physician expertise to interpret AI answers for patients.
Our overall assessment is that MTI is a potentially useful tool for researchers wishing to classify texts from a variety of sources into disease areas.
This cross-sectional study compared plain language summaries (PLSs) from medical and non-medical organizations regarding conclusiveness, readability and textual characteristics.
as people aged, they searched for significantly less health wellness information (P<.001) and more health guidance (P<.001), and health management information (P=.003).
A scoping review to determine how health service librarians instruct practicing clinicians and health sciences faculty in support of their continuing education.
Conclusion: Social media facilitates interpersonal communication, information exchange and knowledge sharing, and infographics may draw people into healthy lifestyle and fitness information items relevant to them.