Building a gold standard to construct search filters: a case study with biomarkers for oral cancer.

OBJECTIVE: To support clinical researchers, librarians and informationists may need search filters for particular tasks. Development of filters typically depends on a "gold standard" dataset. This paper describes generalizable methods for creating a gold standard to support future filter development and evaluation using oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) as a case study. OSCC is the most common malignancy affecting the oral cavity. Investigation of biomarkers with potential prognostic utility is an active area of research in OSCC. The methods discussed here should be useful for designing quality search filters in similar domains. METHODS: The authors searched MEDLINE for prognostic studies of OSCC, developed annotation guidelines for screeners, ran three calibration trials before annotating the remaining body of citations, and measured inter-annotator agreement (IAA). RESULTS: We retrieved 1,818 citations. After calibration, we screened the remaining citations (n = 1,767; 97.2%); IAA was substantial (kappa = 0.76). The dataset has 497 (27.3%) citations representing OSCC studies of potential prognostic biomarkers. CONCLUSIONS: The gold standard dataset is likely to be high quality and useful for future development and evaluation of filters for OSCC studies of potential prognostic biomarkers. IMPLICATIONS: The methodology we used is generalizable to other domains requiring a reference standard to evaluate the performance of search filters. A gold standard is essential because the labels regarding relevance enable computation of diagnostic metrics, such as sensitivity and specificity. Librarians and informationists with data analysis skills could contribute to developing gold standard datasets and subsequent filters tuned for their patrons' domains of interest.

A prototype mobile application for triaging dental emergencies.

BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests that dental emergencies are likely to occur when preferred care is less accessible. Communication barriers often exist that cause patients to receive suboptimal treatment or experience discomfort for extended lengths of time. Furthermore, limitations in the conventional approach for managing dental emergencies prevent dentists from receiving critical information before patient visits. METHODS: The authors developed a mobile application to mediate the uncertainty of dental emergencies. The development and study consisted of a needs analysis and quality assessment of intraoral images captured by smartphones, prototype development, refining the prototype through usability inspection methods, and formative evaluation through usability testing with prospective users. RESULTS: The developed application successfully guided all users through a series of questions designed to capture clinically meaningful data by using familiar smartphone functions. All participants were able to complete a report within 4 minutes, and all clinical information was comprehended by the users. CONCLUSIONS: Patient-provided information accompanied by high-resolution images may help dentists substantially in predicting urgency or preparing necessary treatment resources. The results illustrate the feasibility of patients using smartphone applications to report dental emergencies. This technology allows dentists to assess care remotely when direct patient contact is less practical. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: This study's results demonstrate that patients can use mobile applications to transmit clinical data to their dentists and suggest the possibility of expanding the use of mobile applications to enhance access to routine and emergency dental care. The authors addressed how to enable patients to communicate emergency needs directly to a dentist while obviating patient emergency department visits.

What dental educators need to understand about emerging technologies to incorporate them effectively into the educational process.

Many dental schools are currently struggling with the adoption of emerging technologies and the incorporation of these technologies into the educational process. Dental students exhibit an increasing degree of digital comfort when using social networking, mobile devices, search engines, or e-textbooks. Although the majority of students might consider themselves to be very skilled at using information technology, many faculty members would claim the opposite when evaluating their own knowledge and skills in the use of technology. As the use of technology, both formally and informally, continues to increase, dental educators are faced with many questions, such as: Does students' digital comfort disguise a lack of information literacy? What is the appropriate path of implementing technology into teaching and learning, and how can institutions support such an implementation? This article surveys a series of myths that exist about the use of technology in education and raises questions about their validity and how dental educators can avoid being misled by them.