English and Spanish oral cancer information on the internet: a pilot surface quality and content evaluation of oral cancer web sites.

OBJECTIVE: Oral and pharyngeal cancers are responsible for over 7600 deaths each year in the United States. Given the significance of the disease and the fact that many individuals increasingly rely on health information on the Internet, it is important that patients and others can access clear and accurate oral cancer information on the Web. The objective of this study was threefold: (a) develop an initial method to evaluate surface and content quality of selected English- and Spanish-language oral cancer Web sites; (b) conduct a pilot evaluation; and (c) discuss implications of our findings for dental public health. METHODS: We developed a search strategy to find oral cancer sites frequented by the public using Medline Plus, Google, and Yahoo in English and Spanish. We adapted the Information Quality Tool (IQT) to perform a surface evaluation and developed a novel tool to evaluate site content for 24 sites each in English and Spanish. RESULTS: English-language sites had an average IQT score of 76.6 (out of 100) and an average content score of 52.1 (out of 100). Spanish-language sites had an average IQT score of 50.3 and an average content score of 25.6. CONCLUSIONS: The study produced a quality assessment of oral cancer Web sites useful for clinicians and patients. Sites provided more information on clinical presentation, and etiology, and risk factors, than other aspects of oral cancer. The surface and quality of Spanish-language sites was low, possibly putting Hispanic populations at a disadvantage regarding oral cancer information on the Web.

The dental informatics online community.

Dental Informatics (DI) is the application of computer and information science to improve dental practice, research, education, and program administration. To support the growth of this emerging discipline, we created the Dental Informatics Online Community (DIOC). The DIOC provides a dedicated professional home for DI researchers and serves as an open, common, and worldwide forum for all individuals interested in the field. It was created and is maintained by the Center for Dental Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine, independent from any professional association, corporate interest or funding source. The DIOC's Website provides many useful features, such as a learning center, publication archive, member and project directories, and the Current Awareness Service (CAS). The CAS automatically notifies members about new information added to the Community. Notifications are individualized according to a member's profile and activities on the site. The DIOC is a research-oriented online community which provides resources in the dental informatics and dental technology field, as well as a way to establish social connections to share ideas, problems and research opportunities. Member and activity growth since the community's inception in 2005 have been steady, but future sustainability of the community depends on many factors.

Emphasizing Social Features in Information Portals: Effects on New Member Engagement.

Many information portals are adding social features with hopes of enhancing the overall user experience. Invitations to join and welcome pages that highlight these social features are expected to encourage use and participation. While this approach is widespread and seems plausible, the effect of providing and highlighting social features remains to be tested. We studied the effects of emphasizing social features on users' response to invitations, their decisions to join, their willingness to provide profile information, and their engagement with the portal's social features. The results of a quasi-experiment found no significant effect of social emphasis in invitations on receivers' responsiveness. However, users receiving invitations highlighting social benefits were less likely to join the portal and provide profile information. Social emphasis in the initial welcome page for the site also was found to have a significant effect on whether individuals joined the portal, how much profile information they provided and shared, and how much they engaged with social features on the site. Unexpectedly, users who were welcomed in a social manner were less likely to join and provided less profile information; they also were less likely to engage with social features of the portal. This suggests that even in online contexts where social activity is an increasingly common feature, highlighting the presence of social features may not always be the optimal presentation strategy.

Methodology to develop and evaluate a semantic representation for NLP.

Natural language processing applications that extract information from text rely on semantic representations. The objective of this paper is to describe a methodology for creating a semantic representation for information that will be automatically extracted from textual clinical records. We illustrate two of the four steps of the methodology in this paper using the case study of encoding information from dictated dental exams: (1) develop an initial representation from a set of training documents and (2) iteratively evaluate and evolve the representation while developing annotation guidelines. Our approach for developing and evaluating a semantic representation is based on standard principles and approaches that are not dependent on any particular domain or type of semantic representation.

A preliminary comparison of speech recognition functionality in dental practice management systems.

In this study, we examined speech recognition functionality in four leading dental practice management systems. Twenty dental students used voice to chart a simulated patient with 18 findings in each system. Results show it can take over a minute to chart one finding and that users frequently have to repeat commands. Limited functionality, poor usability and a high error rate appear to retard adoption of speech recognition in dentistry.

Speech recognition in dental software systems: features and functionality.

Speech recognition allows clinicians a hands-free option for interacting with computers, which is important for dentists who have difficulty using a keyboard and a mouse when working with patients. While roughly 13% of all general dentists with computers at chairside use speech recognition for data entry, 16% have tried and discontinued using this technology. In this study, researches explored the speech recognition features and functionality of four dental software applications. For each system, the documentation as well as the working program was evaluated to determine speech recognition capabilities. A comparison checklist was created to highlight each program's speech functionality. Next, after the development of charting scripts, feasibility user tests were conducted to determine if performance comparisons could be made across systems. While four systems were evaluated in the feature comparison, only two of the systems were reviewed during the feasibility user tests. Results show that current speech functionality, instead of being intuitive, is directly comparable to using a mouse. Further, systems require memorizing an enormous amount of specific terminology opposed to using natural language. User testing is a feasible way to measure the performance of speech recognition across systems and will be conducted in the near future. Overall, limited speech functionality reduces the ability of clinicians to interact directly with the computer during clinical care. This can hinder the benefits of electronic patient records and clinical decision support systems.

Quality assessment of English and Spanish oral cancer websites.

Based on the morbidity and mortality due to oral cancer, it is essential that oral cancer information available on the Internet be usable, organized and credible. We evaluated the information quality of 24 English-language and 25 Spanish-language oral cancer websites. English-language sites scored 74.7 out of 100 points on the Information Quality Tool scale, while Spanish-language sites scored 48.8. Developers of oral cancer websites should improve the design, organization and credibility of the information presented.