Journal of Medical Internet Research - International Scientific Journal for Medical Research, Information and Communication on the Internet #Preprint #PeerReviewMe: Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint. Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn. Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period. Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author). Background: The use of Internet data is increasingly integrated in Health Informatics research and is becoming a useful tool in exploring human behavior. The most popular tool for examining online behavior is Google Trends, an open tool that provides information on what is trending and on the variations of the online interest in selected keywords and topics over time. Online search traffic data from Google have been shown to be useful in analyzing human behavior towards health topics and in predicting diseases’ occurrence and outbreaks. Objective: Despite the large number of Google Trends studies during the last decade, the literature on the subject lacks a specific methodology framework. This article aims at providing an overview of the tool and data, and at presenting the first methodology framework in using Google Trends in Infodemiology and Infoveillance, consisting of the main factors that need to be taken into account for a solid methodology base. Methods: We provide a step-by-step guide for the methodology that needs to be followed when researching with Google Trends; essential for robust results in this line of research. Results: At first, an overview of the tool and the data are presented, followed by the analysis of the key methodological points for ensuring the robustness of the results, i.e., selecting the appropriate keyword(s), region(s), period, and category. Conclusions: In the era of Big Data, the analysis of online queries is all the more integrated in health research. This article presents and analyzes the key points that need to be considered for a solid methodology basis when using Google Trends data, which is crucial for ensuring the value and validity of the results.

Journal of Medical Internet Research - International Scientific Journal for Medical Research, Information and Communication on the Internet #Preprint #PeerReviewMe: Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint. Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn. Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period. Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author). Background: In the era of information overload, are Big Data Analytics the answer to access and better manage available knowledge? Over the last decade, the use of online data in public health issues, i.e., Infodemiology, has been proven useful in assessing various aspects of human behavior. Google Trends is the most popular tool to gather such information, and has been used in several topics up to this point, with health and medicine being the most focused-on subject. Online behavior is monitored and analyzed in order to examine the actual human behavior, so as to predict, better assess, and even prevent health related issues that constantly arise in everyday life. Objective: This systematic review aims at reporting and further presenting and analyzing the methods, tools, and statistical approaches for Google Trends studies in health related topics from 2006 to 2016, so as to provide an overview of the usefulness of said tool and be a point of reference for future research on the subject. Methods: Following the PRISMA guidelines for selecting the studies, the term ‘Google Trends’ was searched for in the Scopus and PubMed databases from 2006 to 2016, applying specific criteria for types of publications and topics. A total of 109 published papers were extracted, excluding duplicates and the ones that did not fall inside the topics of health and medicine or the selected article types. The published papers were then further categorized according to their methodological approach, namely visualization, seasonality, correlations, forecastings, and modeling. Results: All the examined papers consisted –by definition- of time series analysis, and all but two included data visualization. 23.08% studies used Google Trends data for examining seasonality, while correlations and modeling have been preformed in 39.42% and 32.69% of the studies, respectively. Only 8.65% of the studies have used Google Trends data for predictions and forecastings in health related topics, thus it is evident that a gap exists in forecasting using Google Trends data. Conclusions: The monitoring of online search queries can provide insight on human behavior, as this field is significantly and continuously growing, and will be proven more than valuable in the future for assessing behavioral changes and providing ground for research using data that could not have been accessed otherwise.

Background: Web-based sources are increasingly employed in the analysis, detection, and forecasting of diseases and epidemics, and in predicting human behavior toward several health topics. This use of the internet has come to be known as infodemiology, a concept introduced by Gunther Eysenbach. Infodemiology and infoveillance studies use web-based data and have become an integral part of health informatics research over the past decade. Objective: The aim of this paper is to provide a scoping review of the state-of-the-art in infodemiology along with the background and history of the concept, to identify sources and health categories and topics, to elaborate on the validity of the employed methods, and to discuss the gaps identified in current research. Methods: The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines were followed to extract the publications that fall under the umbrella of infodemiology and infoveillance from the JMIR, PubMed, and Scopus databases. A total of 338 documents were extracted for assessment. Results: Of the 338 studies, the vast majority (n=282, 83.4%) were published with JMIR Publications. The Journal of Medical Internet Research features almost half of the publications (n=168, 49.7%), and JMIR Public Health and Surveillance has more than one-fifth of the examined studies (n=74, 21.9%). The interest in the subject has been increasing every year, with 2018 featuring more than one-fourth of the total publications (n=89, 26.3%), and the publications in 2017 and 2018 combined accounted for more than half (n=171, 50.6%) of the total number of publications in the last decade. The most popular source was Twitter with 45.0% (n=152), followed by Google with 24.6% (n=83), websites and platforms with 13.9% (n=47), blogs and forums with 10.1% (n=34), Facebook with 8.9% (n=30), and other search engines with 5.6% (n=19). As for the subjects examined, conditions and diseases with 17.2% (n=58) and epidemics and outbreaks with 15.7% (n=53) were the most popular categories identified in this review, followed by health care (n=39, 11.5%), drugs (n=40, 10.4%), and smoking and alcohol (n=29, 8.6%). Conclusions: The field of infodemiology is becoming increasingly popular, employing innovative methods and approaches for health assessment. The use of web-based sources, which provide us with information that would not be accessible otherwise and tackles the issues arising from the time-consuming traditional methods, shows that infodemiology plays an important role in health informatics research.

The ethics of generative artificial intelligence (AI) use in scientific manuscript content creation has become a serious matter of concern in the scientific publishing community. Generative AI has computationally become capable of elaborating research questions; refining programming code; generating text in scientific language; and generating images, graphics, or figures. However, this technology should be used with caution. In this editorial, we outline the current state of editorial policies on generative AI or chatbot use in authorship, peer review, and editorial processing of scientific and scholarly manuscripts. Additionally, we provide JMIR Publications’ editorial policies on these issues. We further detail JMIR Publications’ approach to the applications of AI in the editorial process for manuscripts in review in a JMIR Publications journal.

Background: Infodemiology (ie, information epidemiology) uses web-based data to inform public health and policy. Infodemiology metrics have been widely and successfully used to assess and forecast epidemics and outbreaks. Objective: In light of the recent coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic that started in Wuhan, China in 2019, online search traffic data from Google are used to track the spread of the new coronavirus disease in Europe. Methods: Time series from Google Trends from January to March 2020 on the Topic (Virus) of “Coronavirus” were retrieved and correlated with official data on COVID-19 cases and deaths worldwide and in the European countries that have been affected the most: Italy (at national and regional level), Spain, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Results: Statistically significant correlations are observed between online interest and COVID-19 cases and deaths. Furthermore, a critical point, after which the Pearson correlation coefficient starts declining (even if it is still statistically significant) was identified, indicating that this method is most efficient in regions or countries that have not yet peaked in COVID-19 cases. Conclusions: In the past, infodemiology metrics in general and data from Google Trends in particular have been shown to be useful in tracking and forecasting outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics as, for example, in the cases of the Middle East respiratory syndrome, Ebola, measles, and Zika. With the COVID-19 pandemic still in the beginning stages, it is essential to explore and combine new methods of disease surveillance to assist with the preparedness of health care systems at the regional level.

During the unprecedented situation that all countries around the globe are facing due to the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which has also had severe socioeconomic consequences, it is imperative to explore novel approaches to monitoring and forecasting regional outbreaks as they happen or even before they do so. To that end, in this paper, the role of Google query data in the predictability of COVID-19 in the United States at both national and state level is presented. As a preliminary investigation, Pearson and Kendall rank correlations are examined to explore the relationship between Google Trends data and COVID-19 data on cases and deaths. Next, a COVID-19 predictability analysis is performed, with the employed model being a quantile regression that is bias corrected via bootstrap simulation, i.e., a robust regression analysis that is the appropriate statistical approach to taking against the presence of outliers in the sample while also mitigating small sample estimation bias. The results indicate that there are statistically significant correlations between Google Trends and COVID-19 data, while the estimated models exhibit strong COVID-19 predictability. In line with previous work that has suggested that online real-time data are valuable in the monitoring and forecasting of epidemics and outbreaks, it is evident that such infodemiology approaches can assist public health policy makers in addressing the most crucial issues: flattening the curve, allocating health resources, and increasing the effectiveness and preparedness of their respective health care systems.