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What is consumer health informatics? A systematic review of published definitions
David Flaherty1, Laurie Hoffman-Goetz, Jose F Arocha
1School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo , Waterloo, Ontario , Canada.
Background:
Consumer health informatics (CHI) is an emerging field that utilizes technology to provide health information to enhance health-care decision making by the public. There is, however, no widely accepted or uniform definition of CHI. A consensus definition would be important for pedagogical reasons, to build capacity and to reduce confusion about what the discipline consists of.
Aim:
We undertook a systematic review of published definitions of CHI and evaluated them using five quality assessment criteria and measures of similarity.
Methods:
Five databases were searched (Embase, Web of Science, MEDLINE, CINAHL and Business Source Complete) resulting in 1101 citations. Twenty-three studies met the inclusion criteria. Definitions were appraised using five criteria (with each scoring out of one): use of published citation, multi-disciplinarity, journal impact, definition comprehensibility, text readability.
Results:
Most definitions scored low on citation (Mean ± SD: 0.22 ± 0.42), multi-disciplinarity (0.15 ± 0.28) and readability (0.04 ± 0.21) and somewhat higher on IF (0.35 ± 0.45) and definition comprehensibility (idea density) (0.87 ± 0.34) criteria. Overall, the quality of the published definitions was low 1.63 ± 0.80 (out of five).
Conclusions:
The definitions of CHI were variable in terms of the quality assessment criteria. This suggests the need for continued discussion amongst consumer health informaticians to develop a clear consensus definition about CHI.
