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Emergency physicians on the frontlines of the COVID‐19 pandemic are first‐hand witnesses to the direct impact of health misinformation and disinformation on individual patients, communities, and public health at large. Therefore, emergency physicians naturally have a crucial role to play to steward factual information and combat health misinformation. Unfortunately, most physicians lack the communications and social media training needed to address health misinformation with patients and online, highlighting an obvious gap in emergency medicine training. We convened an expert panel of academic emergency physicians who have taught and conducted research about health misinformation at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA, on May 13, 2022. The panelists represented geographically diverse institutions including Baystate Medical Center/Tufts University, Boston Medical Center, Northwestern University, Rush Medical College, and Stanford University. In this article, we describe the scope and impact of health misinformation, introduce methods for addressing misinformation in the clinical environment and online, acknowledge the challenges of tackling misinformation from our physician colleagues, demonstrate strategies for debunking and prebunking, and highlight implications for education and training in emergency medicine. Finally, we discuss several actionable interventions that define the role of the emergency physician in the management of health misinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tests an extended cognitive mediation model (CMM) by adding cancer worry and risk perceptions as outcomes of elaboration and predictors of intention to uptake human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination among young Chinese women. It also investigates if news attention on newspaper, television, and the Internet are indirectly associated with the intention to uptake HPV vaccination through these mediators. Results of structural equation modeling based on survey data with 399 female university students indicate partial support to the extended CMM. Results show that news attention on the Internet is positively associated with elaboration, while news attention on newspaper and television had no association with it. Moreover, elaboration is positively associated with cancer worry but not with risk perception. Next, cancer worry and risk perception were associated with intention to uptake HPV vaccination. Finally, mediation analysis results showed that news attention on the Internet is indirectly associated with intention to uptake HPV vaccination through elaboration and cancer worry. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aside from personal beliefs, the decision to consume genetically modified foods (GMFs) can be explained by individuals' elaboration of information gained from the media and interpersonal discussion. Based on this idea, we incorporated communication factors (i.e., media attention, interpersonal discussion, and elaboration) with factors derived from the theory of planned behavior (i.e., attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control) to predict intention to consume GMFs in China. Results of the hierarchical regression analysis based on Web survey data from 467 university students showed that attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control were positively related to intention to consume GMFs. Although all communication factors did not predict intention to consume GMFs, we found that elaboration moderated the relationship between media attention and interpersonal discussion to intention to consume GMFs. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

eHealth literacy is an emerging concept of scholarly interest that is seen as the extension of health literacy in the digital era. This study proposes a new definition of eHealth literacy to facilitate future research on this growing scholarly area. Based on the analysis of 14 definitions of eHealth, health and digital literacy, this study defines eHealth literacy as the interplay of individual and social factors in the use of digital technologies to search, acquire, comprehend, appraise, communicate and apply health information in all contexts of healthcare with the goal of maintaining or improving the quality of life throughout the lifespan. Researchers should now focus on developing operational measures to develop a valid and reliable means to measure eHealth literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Clinical data in the United States are highly fragmented, stored in numerous different databases, and are defined by service providers or clinical specialties rather than by individuals or their families. As a result, linking or aggregating a complete record for a patient is a major technological, legal, and operational challenge. One of the factors that has made clinical data integration so difficult to achieve is the lack of a universal ID for everyone. This leads to other related problems of having to prove identity at each interaction with the health system and repeatedly providing basic information on demographics, insurance, payment, and medical conditions. Traditional solutions that require complex governance, expensive technology, and risks to privacy and security of the data have failed adequately to solve this interoperability problem. We describe the technical design decisions of a patient-centric decentralized health identity management system using the blockchain technology, called MediLinker, to address some of these challenges., Design: Our multidisciplinary research group developed and implemented an identity wallet, which uses the blockchain technology to manage verifiable credentials issued by healthcare clinics, banks, and insurance companies. To manage patient's self-sovereign identity, we leveraged the Hyperledger Indy blockchain framework to store patient's decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and the schemas or format for each credential type. In contrast, the credentials containing patient data are stored 'off-ledger' in each person's wallet and accessible via a computer or smartphone. We used Hyperledger Aries as a middleware layer (API: Application Programming Interface) to connect Hyperledger Indy with the front-end, which was developed using a JavaScript framework, ReactJS (Web Application) and React Native (iOS Application)., Results: MediLinker allows users to store their personal data on digital wallets, which they control. It uses a decentralized trusted identity using Hyperledger Indy and Hyperledger Aries. Patients use MediLinker to register and share their information securely and in a trusted system with healthcare and other service providers. Each MediLinker wallet can have six credential types: health ID with patient demographics, insurance, medication list including COVID-19 vaccination status, credit card, medical power of attorney (MPOA) for guardians of pediatric or geriatric patients, and research consent. The system allows for in-person and remote granting and revoking of such permissions for care, research, or other purposes without repeatedly requiring physical identity documents or enrollment information., Conclusion: We successfully developed and tested a blockchain-based technical architecture, described in this article, as an identity management system that may be operationalized and scaled for future implementation to improve patient experience and control over their personal information., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (© 2022 The Authors.)

Objective: While existing research by our team has demonstrated the feasibility of building a decentralized identity management application ("MediLinker") for health information, there are implementation issues related to testing such blockchain-based health applications in real-world clinical settings. In this study, we identified clinical, organizational and regulatory, and ethical and social (CORES) issues, including recommendations, associated with deploying MediLinker, and blockchain in general, for clinical testing., Methods: CORES issues and recommendations were identified through a focus group with 11 academic, industry, and government experts on March 26, 2021. They were grouped according to their expertise: clinical care ( n = 4), organizational and regulatory concerns ( n = 4), and ethical and social issues ( n = 3). The focus group was conducted via Zoom in which experts were briefed about the study aims, formed into breakout groups to identify key issues based on their group's expertise, and reconvened to share identified issues with other groups and to discuss potential recommendations to address such issues. The focus group was video recorded and transcribed. The resulting transcriptions and meeting notes were imported to MAXQDA 2018 for thematic analysis., Results: Clinical experts identified issues that concern the clinical system, clinical administrators, clinicians, and patients. Organizational and regulatory experts emphasized issues on accountability, compliance, and legal safeguards. Ethics and social-context experts raised issues on trust, transparency, digital divide, and health-related digital autonomy. Accordingly, experts proposed six recommendations that could address most of the identified issues: (1) design interfaces based on patient preferences, (2) ensure testing with diverse populations, (3) ensure compliance with existing policies, (4) present potential positive outcomes to top management, (5) maintain clinical workflow, and (6) increase the public's awareness of blockchain., Conclusions: This study identified a myriad of CORES issues associated with deploying MediLinker in clinical settings. Moreover, the study also uncovered several recommendations that could address such issues. The findings raise awareness on CORES issues that should be considered when designing, developing, and deploying blockchain for healthcare. Further, the findings provide additional insights into the development of MediLinker from a prototype to a minimum viable product for clinical testing. Future studies can use CORES as a socio-technical model to identify issues and recommendations associated with deploying health information technologies in clinical settings., Competing Interests: The authors have no relevant financial or nonfinancial interests to disclose., (© 2022 The Authors.)