JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Digital communication has emerged as a major source of scientific and medical information for Healthcare Professionals (HCPs). There is a need to set up an effective and reliable methodology to assess and monitor quality of content published online.

Objective:

The aim of this project was to develop content quality guidelines for NeurodiemTM, an independent scientific information platform dedicated to Neurology, provided for Healthcare Professionals (HCPs) and neuroscientists. These content quality guidelines are intended to be used by i) content providers as a framework to meet content quality standards, ii) reviewers as a tool for analyzing and scoring quality of content (i.e. tool more appropriate to Neurodiem and similar scientific information platforms in contrast to existing quality control tools)

Methods:

Specific scientific criteria were designed and utilized on a monthly basis using a 5-point scale to measure quality of curated and original content published on the website. Three quality domains were considered for Summaries including: i) source reliability and topic relevance for neurologists, ii) structure, iii) scientific and didactic value. Congress highlights were analyzed through i) Relevance of congress selection, ii) Congress coverage as per original conferences’ program, iii) Scientific and didactic value of individual abstracts. Quality of Expert Point of View and Talks was evaluated considering the following quality domains: i) Credibility (authorship) and topic relevance for neurologists, ii) Scientific and Didactic value, iii) Reliability (references) and format. This approach was evaluated and endorsed by an independent Scientific Committee of widely recognized medical experts in Neurology.

Results:

Analysis of the evolution of each Summary quality subscores shows that quality corresponding to the 3 domains “Reliability and relevance”, “Structure”, “Scientific and didactic value” increased in Month 2 by almost 14%, following the implementation of the content quality guidelines. “Scientific and didactic value” quality domain displayed a mean score of 8,20/10 (refer to scoring principals for more details) with a higher variability than the first two quality domains showing that maintenance of these quality items over time was more challenging. Talks (either in the format of interviews (ITW) or slide deck-supported scientific presentations (SP)) and Expert Point of View demonstrated high quality from the implementation of the content quality guidelines and was maintained over time.

Conclusions:

Our paper supports the feasibility of developing content quality guidelines providing both i) a reliable framework for generating independent high-quality content addressing the educational needs of neurologists ii) an objective evaluation tool for improving and maintaining this scientific quality level. Use of these criteria and scoring system could serve as a standard and reference to build an editorial strategy and review process applied to any medical news and platforms.