Gunther Eysenbach

University of Toronto | U of T · Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation

ChatGPT is a generative language model tool launched by OpenAI on November 30, 2022, enabling the public to converse with a machine on a broad range of topics. In January 2023, ChatGPT reached over 100 million users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application to date. This interview with ChatGPT is part 2 of a larger interview with ChatGPT....

There is currently a paucity of evidence‐based strategies that have been shown to increase citations of peer‐reviewed articles following their publication. We conducted a 12‐month randomized controlled trial to examine whether the promotion of article links in an online cross‐publisher distribution platform (TrendMD) affects citations. In all, 3,20...

Background: Clinical trials are key to advancing evidence-based medical research. The medical research literature has identified the impact and risks of publication bias in clinical trials. Selective publication for positive outcomes or non-publication of negative results could lead to misdirection of subsequent research, justify further research,...

BACKGROUND Clinical trials are key to advancing evidence-based medical research. The medical research literature has identified the impact and risks of publication bias in clinical trials. Selective publication for positive outcomes or non-publication of negative results could lead to misdirect subsequent research, justify further research, and res...

Background: The efficacy of internet-based interventions to improve hypertension management is not established. We evaluated the therapeutic benefit of e-counseling by adapting best evidence guidelines for behavioral counseling. Methods and results: This multicenter double-blind randomized controlled trial included assessments at baseline, 4 mon...

Background: Seventy percent of lifetime cases of mental illness emerge before the age of 24 years, but many youth are unable to access the support and services they require in a timely and appropriate way. With most youth using the internet, electronic health (eHealth) interventions are promising tools for reaching this population. Through partici...

Introduction: The effectiveness of self-guided Internet-based lifestyle counseling (e-counseling) varies, depending on treatment protocol. Two dominant procedures in e-counseling are expert- and user-driven. The influence of these procedures on hypertension management remains unclear. The objective was to assess whether blood pressure improved wit...

Prior research shows that article reader counts (i.e. saves) on the online reference manager, Mendeley, correlate to future citations. There are currently no evidenced-based distribution strategies that have been shown to increase article saves on Mendeley. We conducted a 4-week randomized controlled trial to examine how promotion of article links...

Background Seventy percent of lifetime cases of mental illness emerge prior to age 24. While early detection and intervention can address approximately 70% of child and youth cases of mental health concerns, the majority of youth with mental health concerns do not receive the services they need. Objective The objective of this paper is to describe...

Key points With over 6,000 new peer‐reviewed articles published daily, scholarly content providers face growing challenges of reaching their target audience. There are few evidenced‐based strategies for disseminating online scholarly content to a targeted audience. TrendMD increased weekly page views by 49% relative to baseline traffic for a group...

Background: Trauma is the most common cause of mortality among people between the ages of 1 and 45 years, costing Canadians 19.8 billion dollars a year (2004 data), yet half of all patients with major traumatic injuries do not receive evidence-based care, and significant regional variation in the quality of care across Canada exists. Accordingly, o...

Background Personal health record platforms and patient portals have the potential to empower patients by providing access to health records, but not all patients may be interested in this. The purpose of this study was to explore inpatients' opinions on their hospital paper medical records after they had incidental access to them. Methods A surve...

Abstract The primary aim was to examine the criterion and construct validity and test-retest reliability of the Lifesource XL-18 pedometer (A&D Medical, Toronto, ON, Canada) for measuring steps under controlled and free-living activities. The influence of body mass index, waist size and walking speed on the criterion validity of XL-18 was also expl...

In just a few weeks, the Internet could be expanded to include a new .health generic top-level domain name run by a for-profit company with virtually no public health credentials - unless the international community intervenes immediately. This matters to the future of global public health as the “Health Internet” has begun to emerge as the predomi...

There are few mechanisms that bring the academic and business worlds together in a way that would maximize the success of health technology (health tech) start-ups by increasing researchers' knowledge about how to operate in the business world. Existing solutions (eg, technology transfer offices and dual degree MD/MBA programs) are often unavailabl...

The number of research studies published which focus on medical “applications” or “apps” continues to grow exponentially. Many academics use these terms interchangeably, however we believe that the discrepancy of terminology used may present a problem for future researchers to systematically identify and conduct appropriate literature searches. We...

Background. Internet-based complex interventions aiming to promote weight loss and optimize healthy behaviors have attracted much attention. However, evidence for effect is lacking. Obesity is a growing problem, resulting in an increasing demand for cost efficient weight loss programs suitable for use on a large scale, for example, as part of stand...

In 2012, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opened a new round of applications for generic top-level domain (gTLD) names, receiving 1930 applications, of which at least 18 were related to health (eg, ".doctor", ".health", ".med"). The entry of new, commercial players applying to create health-related names reopens the d...

Social media are dynamic and interactive computer-mediated communication tools that have high penetration rates in the general population in high-income and middle-income countries. However, in medicine and health care, a large number of stakeholders (eg, clinicians, administrators, professional colleges, academic institutions, ministries of health...

Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a public health priority. Its age-standardized prevalence has increased over the past decade. A major challenge for the management of CHF is to promote long-term adherence to self-care behaviors without overtaxing available health care resources. Counseling by multidisciplinary health care teams helps to improve adher...

Background: Collaborative writing applications (eg, wikis and Google Documents) hold the potential to improve the use of evidence in both public health and health care. The rapid rise in their use has created the need for a systematic synthesis of the evidence of their impact as knowledge translation (KT) tools in the health care sector and for an...

The field of clinical informatics has expanded substantially in the six decades since its inception. Early research focused on simple demonstrations that health information technology (HIT) such as electronic health records (EHRs), computerized provider order entry (CPOE), and clinical decision support (CDS) systems were feasible and potentially be...

Background: Randomized trials of web-based and mobile interventions pose very specific issues and challenges. A set of best practices on how to conduct and report such trials was recently summarized in the CONSORT-EHEALTH statement (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials of Electronic and Mobile HEalth Applications and onLine TeleHealth), publ...

Elevated blood pressure is a leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease and mortality. Internet-based interventions (e-counselling) have the potential to deliver a wide range of preventive counselling services. The purpose of this review was to (1) assess the efficacy of e-counselling in reducing blood pressure and (2) identify key components o...

The rapid rise in the use of collaborative writing applications (eg, wikis, Google Documents, and Google Knol) has created the need for a systematic synthesis of the evidence of their impact as knowledge translation (KT) tools in the health care sector and for an inventory of the factors that affect their use. While researchers have conducted syste...

Many eHealth technologies are not successful in realizing sustainable innovations in health care practices. One of the reasons for this is that the current development of eHealth technology often disregards the interdependencies between technology, human characteristics, and the socioeconomic environment, resulting in technology that has a low impa...

Web-based and mobile health interventions (also called "Internet interventions" or "ehealth/mhealth interventions") are tools or treatments, typically behaviorally based, that are operationalized and transformed for delivery via the Internet or mobile platforms. These include electronic tools for patients, informal caregivers, healthy consumers, an...

Citations in peer-reviewed articles and the impact factor are generally accepted measures of scientific impact. Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter, blogs or social bookmarking tools provide the possibility to construct innovative article-level or journal-level metrics to gauge impact and influence. However, the relationship of the these new metrics to t...

The purpose of this qualitative study was to improve understanding of family caregivers' use of Web-based intervention support by integrating three theoretical models. The study applied the Anderson's model of health service utilization, Venkatesh's theory of technology acceptance, and Chatman's and Wilson's information behavior theories. This qual...

To provide an overview on social media for consumers and patients in areas of health behaviours and outcomes. A directed review of recent literature. We discuss the limitations and challenges of social media, ranging from social network sites (SNSs), computer games, mobile applications, to online videos. An overview of current users of social media...

Social media are online tools that allow collaboration and community building. Succinctly, they can be described as applications where "users add value". This paper aims to show how five educators have used social media tools in medical and health education to attempt to add value to the education they provide. We conducted a review of the literatu...

Objectives: Social media are online tools that allow collaboration and community building. Succinctly, they can be described as applications where “users add value”. This paper aims to show how five educators have used social media tools in medical and health education to attempt to add value to the education they provide. Methods: We conducted a r...

: To provide an overview on social media for consumers and patients in areas of health behaviours and outcomes. A directed review of recent literature. : We discuss the limitations and challenges of social media, ranging from social network sites (SNSs), computer games, mobile applications, to online videos. An overview of current users of social m...

This theme issue on e-mental health presents 16 articles from leading researchers working on systems and theories related to supporting and improving mental health conditions and mental health care using information and communication technologies. In this editorial, we present the background of this theme issue, and highlight the content of this is...

Treatments and organizational changes supported by eHealth are beginning to play an important role in improving disease treatment outcome and providing cost-efficient care management. "Improvehealth.eu" is a novel eHealth service to support the treatment of patients with depressive disorder. It offers active patient engagement and collaborative car...

SQL Queries for Automated Tweet Coding & Analysis. SQL syntax for search patterns and keywords used by Infovigil for automated tweet coding and analysis. (0.14 MB PDF)

Surveys are popular methods to measure public perceptions in emergencies but can be costly and time consuming. We suggest and evaluate a complementary "infoveillance" approach using Twitter during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Our study aimed to: 1) monitor the use of the terms "H1N1" versus "swine flu" over time; 2) conduct a content analysis of "tweets...

Attrition, or nonuse of the intervention, is a significant problem in e-health. However, the reasons for this phenomenon are poorly understood. Building on Eysenbach's "Law of Attrition", this study aimed to explore the usage behavior of users of e-health services. We used two theoretical models, Andersen's Behavioral Model of Health Service Utiliz...

In this work, a novel method of cocitation analysis, coined “contextual cocitation analysis,” is introduced and described in comparison to traditional methods of cocitation analysis. Equations for quantifying contextual cocitation strength are introduced and their implications explored using theoretical examples alongside the application of context...

Aim: A systematic literature review, covering publications from 1994 to 2009, was carried out to determine the effects of teleconsultation regarding clinical, behavioral, and care coordination outcomes of diabetes care compared to usual care. Two types of teleconsultation were distinguished: (1) asynchronous teleconsultation for monitoring and del...

This theme issue on e-mental health presents 16 articles from leading researchers working on systems and theories related to supporting and improving mental health conditions and mental health care using information and communication technologies. In this editorial, we present the background of this theme issue, and highlight the content of this is...

Peer-reviewed journals remain important vehicles for knowledge transfer and dissemination in health informatics, yet, their format, processes and business models are changing only slowly. Up to the end of last century, it was common for individual researchers and scientific organizations to leave the business of knowledge transfer to professional p...

RÉSUMÉ L’objectif de cette étude était d’évaluer la facilité d’utilisation d’un nouveau service de soutien pour personnel soignant basé sur Internet (ICSS) et d’évaluer ses effets sur la santé des Canadiens chinois qui ont soigné un membre de la famille atteinte de démence. Les données démogaphiques et de questionnaire ont été recueillies auprès de...

Free or low-cost sources of unstructured information, such as Internet news and online discussion sites, provide detailed local and near real-time data on disease outbreaks, even in countries that lack traditional public health surveillance. To improve public health surveillance and, ultimately, interventions, we examined 3 primary systems that pro...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of hybrid environments (i.e. where part of the patient record is paper-based and part of it is electronic) upon aspects of novice nurse information seeking (i.e. amount of information accessed, choice of key information sources, type of information and use of information seeking tactics). A w...

Infodemiology can be defined as the science of distribution and determinants of information in an electronic medium, specifically the Internet, or in a population, with the ultimate aim to inform public health and public policy. Infodemiology data can be collected and analyzed in near real time. Examples for infodemiology applications include the a...

A within group, laboratory, experimental study of nurse information seeking was conducted. As a part of the study, 35 novice nurses assessed and planned the care of two patients in two simulation environments: a paper (PR) environment and a hybrid (HY) environment [i.e., part of the environment was made available in electronic form via an electroni...

Appendix A. CCPAEHR Survey (English).

Access to personal health information through the electronic health record (EHR) is an innovative means to enable people to be active participants in their own health care. Currently this is not an available option for consumers of health. The absence of a key technology, the EHR, is a significant obstacle to providing patient accessible electronic...

In a very significant development for eHealth, broad adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and approaches coincides with the more recent emergence of Personal Health Application Platforms and Personally Controlled Health Records such as Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault, and Dossia. "Medicine 2.0" applications, services and tools are defined as Web-b...

Providing patients with access to their electronic health records offers great promise to improve patient health and satisfaction with their care, as well to improve professional and organizational approaches to health care. Although many benefits have been identified, there are many questions about best practices for the implementation of patient...

Tobacco control in the 21(st) century faces many of the same challenges as in the past, but in different contexts, settings and enabled by powerful new tools including those delivered by information and communication technologies via computer, videocasts, and mobile handsets to the world. Building on the power of electronic networks, Web-assisted t...

We conducted a systematic review of the effectiveness of networked ICT interventions in supporting carers of people with dementia. Five bibliographic databases were searched and a total of 1456 abstracts were identified as potentially relevant. From these we identified 15 papers describing five interventions: ComputerLink, AlzOnline, Caring for Oth...

In this issue, the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) publishes five papers [1-5] which are part of the Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development, organized by the Council of Science Editors [6]. Today, on October 22nd, 2007 (a few days after the United Nations’ World Poverty Day on October 17th), more than 235 science journals t...

eHealth-literate consumers, consumers able to navigate and filter credible information on the Internet, are an important cornerstone of sustainable health systems in the 21(st) century. Various checklists and tools for consumers to assess the quality of health information on the Internet have been proposed, but most fail to take into account the un...

This theoretical paper discusses the model that, as a result of the social process of disintermediation enabled by digital media, traditional intermediaries are replaced by what this author calls apomediaries, which are tools and peers standing by to guide consumers to trustworthy information, or adding credibility to information. For apomediation...

Open access (OA) to the research literature has the potential to accelerate recognition and dissemination of research findings, but its actual effects are controversial. This was a longitudinal bibliometric analysis of a cohort of OA and non-OA articles published between June 8, 2004, and December 20, 2004, in the same journal (PNAS: Proceedings o...

A study published today in PLoS Biology provides robust evidence that open-access articles are more immediately recognized and cited than non-OA articles. This editorial provides some additional follow up data from the most recent analysis of the same cohort in April 2006, 17 to 21 months after publication. These data suggest that the citation gap...

Syndromic surveillance uses health-related data that precede diagnosis and signal a sufficient probability of a case or an outbreak to warrant further public health response. While most syndromic surveillance systems rely on data from clinical encounters with health professionals, I started to explore in 2004 whether analysis of trends in Internet...

Scholars are increasingly citing electronic "web references" which are not preserved in libraries or full text archives. WebCite is a new standard for citing web references. To "webcite" a document involves archiving the cited Web page through www.webcitation.org and citing the WebCite permalink instead of (or in addition to) the unstable live Web...

This editorial briefly reviews the series of unfortunate events that led to the publication, dissemination, and eventual retraction of a flawed Cochrane systematic review on interactive health communication applications (IHCAs), which was widely reported in the media with headlines such as "Internet Makes Us Sick," "Knowledge May Be Hazardous to We...

In an ongoing effort of this Journal to develop and further the theories, models, and best practices around eHealth research, this paper argues for the need for a "science of attrition", that is, a need to develop models for discontinuation of eHealth applications and the related phenomenon of participants dropping out of eHealth trials. What I cal...

EHealth has developed largely from an interdisciplinary framework and, as such, does not have a “home” discipline. The absence of this home discipline has allowed eHealth research to be published widely in journals ranging from the medical sciences, to engineering, to social science or to business and policy studies. The result of this fragmented,...

Analogous to checklists of recommendations such as the CONSORT statement (for randomized trials), or the QUORUM statement (for systematic reviews), which are designed to ensure the quality of reports in the medical literature, a checklist of recommendations for authors is being presented by the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) in an effo...

Beginning in July 2005, several major medical journals, including the Journal of Medical Internet Research, will only consider trials for publication that have been registered in a trial registry before they started. This is to reduce publication bias and to prevent selective reporting of positive outcomes. As existing clinical trial registers seem...

Peer-review and publication of research protocols offer several advantages to all parties involved. Among these are the following opportunities for authors: external expert opinion on the methods, demonstration to funding agencies of prior expert review of the protocol, proof of priority of ideas and methods, and solicitation of potential collabora...

To compile and evaluate the evidence on the effects on health and social outcomes of computer based peer to peer communities and electronic self support groups, used by people to discuss health related issues remotely. Analysis of studies identified from Medline, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Evidence Based Medicine Reviews, Electronics and Communicati...

Editor—Jorgensen and Gotzsche's study made me yawn: they searched the world wide web on a topic and found no information.1,2 Amazing that the BMJ is still publishing such “infodemiology” studies. That authors affiliated with a Cochrane Centre do not cite a relevant systematic review that could have informed methods and discussion of this study is,...

Internet-based depression communities provide a forum for individuals to communicate and share information and ideas. There has been little research into the health status and other characteristics of users of these communities. Online cross-sectional survey of Internet depression communities to identify depressive morbidity among users of Internet...

Each day, more than 12.5 million health-related computer searches are conducted on the World Wide Web. Based on a meta-analysis of 24 published surveys, the author estimates that in the developed world, about 39% of persons with cancer are using the Internet, and approximately 2.3 million persons living with cancer worldwide are online. In addition...

This article originally appeared in BMJ USAEditor—Isaacs and Fitzgerald provide an excellent review of alternative practice justification methods. May I suggest yet another method of persuasion practiced by the medical digiterati? Webidence is scientific (type 1) and pseudo-scientific (type 2) medical advice and opinion posted on a web site. The ma...

The recent global outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) provides an opportunity to study the use and impact of public health informatics and population health technology to detect and fight a global epidemic. Population health technology is the umbrella term for technology applications that have a population focus and the potential t...

Editor—I am editor and publisher of a small but (in my opinion) high quality open access journal (Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR)) (www.jmir.org), which has been open access since its inception in 1999 and which recently introduced an article processing fee of $500 (£306; €463). I therefore cannot help feeling threatened by a powerful o...

It is estimated that 70 million Americans have used the Internet to acquire health-related information. Multiple factors provide the driving force behind this demand for online health information. Information technology is beginning to change the exclusive focus of medicine from curing disease to prevention of disease and enhancing health status. A...

While health information is often said to be the most sought after information on the web, empirical data on the actual frequency of health-related searches on the web are missing. In the present study we aimed to determine the prevalence of health-related searches on the web by analyzing search terms entered by people into popular search engines....

Rating and certification of Internet health content have been suggested as strategies to guide citizens to high quality information. Attempts to rate Internet content, however, have been criticised for being unfeasible or undesirable. We created and tested a novel concept and technology to evaluate online health resources. In this paper, we view va...

We describe MedCIRCLE, an EU-funded semantic web project to implement the first steps towards a global, collaborative rating and guidance system for health information proposed in the MedCERTAIN project. In MedCIRCLE, three European gateway sites for consumer health information will implement the metadata vocabulary HIDDEL (Health Information Discl...

Qualität von Gesundheitsinformationen im World Wide Web und die Frage einer Qualitätsbeurteilung und Qualitätssicherung sind neue Herausforderungen für Public Health. Das Ziel dieses Artikel ist es, die vorhandene empirische Evidenz hinsichtlich Qualität von Internetinformationen und Auswirkungen auf die öffentliche Gesundheit anhand dreier untersc...