As increasing amounts of complex health information become available via the
Internet, providers frequently advise that it is important for health consumers
to carefully consider the source of lay information, as well as discuss the
clinical information they find with their healthcare provider. Beyond clinical
indicators and standards, however, there exist few evaluative frameworks for
assessing health information, especially within peer-to-peer networks.
Traditional methods of analyzing online discussion content, such as keyword
examination or network structure analysis, have proven largely unsatisfactory
for unstructured health data analysis. Using a disease-specific illustration,
this study proposes a theoretical framework that is broad enough to encompass a
variety of poorly understood healthcare domains, and provides one example of an
often misunderstood and ambiguous disease that lends itself to online
patient-centered discussion, which can serve to supplement traditional clinical
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