Glyn Elwyn of Cardiff University, along with a team of colleagues, has a paper in the current Journal of Medical Internet Research about their attempt to examine men’s use of an online decision aid for prostate cancer screening. They conclude:
“There is evidence that Prosdex (the decision aid) promotes informed decision making in men, and we highlight factors that should inform the future design of decision aids. First, for the population using Prosdex, 20 minutes seems to be a critical time window in which we can realistically expect information to be accessed. This finding is significant as there has been a recent trend towards developing more sophisticated decision aids that take longer to use, which could be seen as over engineering. We demonstrated, however, that participants did not use the interactive features, and that the window of opportunity for information transfer to support decision making is narrow. Second, users of decision aids are not a homogenous population: there are different types of users characterized by their level of interaction with the decision aid. Therefore, developers need to design tools that sufficiently support and facilitate informed decision making among the different types of users, and should move away from designing one intervention for all.”
As one who produced some of the very early shared decision-making programs of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making back in the ’90s, I find this interesting but not surprising. We, too, found way back then that users were often turned off by forced interactivity. And, interestingly, the first non-interactive decision aid we produced was on prostate cancer screening and it ran for 20 minutes.
You can take a look at the Prosdex decision aid here. Here’s a screen shot of the entry page:
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
We’ve written about the hype of liquid biopsies for years (see link in comment below). And now this…. https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/12/medicare-shouldnt-cover-liquid-biopsies-early-cancer-detection/
Case counts still matter. “(There) are stories that may not be told adequately if only hospitalizations and deaths are emphasized.” @garyschwitzer interviewed by @dbauder of @AP. https://apnews.com/article/omicron-changing-news-outlets-covid-data-da9272f7c4c8a109c3bfb56bed9e9c76
My friend Gary @garyschwitzer wrote to his city council representative in a Minnesota town about a Viva Las Vegas event scheduled for January.
The response he got seems to perfectly capture where we are now.
https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2021/12/2021-ends-with-covid-craziness-in-sports-and-politics/
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like