Keller Roman, Spanu Alessandra, Puhan Milo Alan, Flahault Antoine, Lovis Christian, Mütsch Margot, Beau-Lejdstrom Raphaelle
Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Future Health Technologies, Singapore-ETH Centre, Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE), Singapore, Singapore.
Front Digit Health. 2023 Mar 20;5:1074961. doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2023.1074961. eCollection 2023.
Drug utilization is currently assessed through traditional data sources such as big electronic medical records (EMRs) databases, surveys, and medication sales. Social media and internet data have been reported to provide more accessible and more timely access to medications' utilization.
This review aims at providing evidence comparing web data on drug utilization to other sources before the COVID-19 pandemic.
We searched Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Scopus until November 25th, 2019, using a predefined search strategy. Two independent reviewers conducted screening and data extraction.
Of 6,563 (64%) deduplicated publications retrieved, 14 (0.2%) were included. All studies showed positive associations between drug utilization information from web and comparison data using very different methods. A total of nine (64%) studies found positive linear correlations in drug utilization between web and comparison data. Five studies reported association using other methods: One study reported similar drug popularity rankings using both data sources. Two studies developed prediction models for future drug consumption, including both web and comparison data, and two studies conducted ecological analyses but did not quantitatively compare data sources. According to the STROBE, RECORD, and RECORD-PE checklists, overall reporting quality was mediocre. Many items were left blank as they were out of scope for the type of study investigated.
Our results demonstrate the potential of web data for assessing drug utilization, although the field is still in a nascent period of investigation. Ultimately, social media and internet search data could be used to get a quick preliminary quantification of drug use in real time. Additional studies on the topic should use more standardized methodologies on different sets of drugs in order to confirm these findings. In addition, currently available checklists for study quality of reporting would need to be adapted to these new sources of scientific information.
目前药物利用情况是通过传统数据来源进行评估的，如大型电子病历（EMR）数据库、调查和药品销售数据。据报道，社交媒体和互联网数据能提供更便捷、更及时的药物利用信息。
本综述旨在提供证据，比较在2019年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行之前，网络上关于药物利用的数据与其他来源的数据。
我们使用预定义的检索策略，在2019年11月25日前检索了Medline、EMBASE、科学网和Scopus数据库。两名独立的评审人员进行筛选和数据提取。
在检索到的6563篇（64%）去重后的出版物中，纳入了14篇（0.2%）。所有研究均显示，通过非常不同的方法，网络上的药物利用信息与对照数据之间存在正相关。共有9项（64%）研究发现网络数据与对照数据在药物利用方面存在正线性相关性。5项研究报告了使用其他方法的关联：1项研究报告了两种数据源的药物受欢迎程度排名相似。2项研究开发了包括网络数据和对照数据在内的未来药物消费预测模型，2项研究进行了生态分析，但未对数据源进行定量比较。根据STROBE、RECORD和RECORD-PE清单，总体报告质量一般。许多项目因超出所研究的研究类型范围而留空。
我们的结果表明，网络数据在评估药物利用方面具有潜力，尽管该领域仍处于初步研究阶段。最终，社交媒体和互联网搜索数据可用于实时快速初步量化药物使用情况。关于该主题的更多研究应采用更标准化的方法，针对不同的药物组，以证实这些发现。此外，目前可用的研究报告质量清单需要适用于这些新的科学信息来源。
