BACKGROUND: The mpox pandemic has caused widespread public concern around the world. The spread of misinformation through the internet and social media could lead to an infodemic that poses challenges to mpox control.
OBJECTIVE: This review aims to summarize mpox-related infodemiology studies to determine the characteristics, influence, prevention, and control measures of the mpox infodemic and propose prospects for future research.
METHODS: The scoping review was conducted based on a structured 5-step methodological framework. A comprehensive search for mpox-related infodemiology studies was performed using PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Scopus, with searches completed by April 30, 2024. After study selection and data extraction, the main topics of the mpox infodemic were categorized and summarized in 4 aspects, including a trend analysis of online information search volume, content topics of mpox-related online posts and comments, emotional and sentiment characteristics of online content, and prevention and control measures for the mpox infodemic.
RESULTS: A total of 1607 articles were retrieved from the databases according to the keywords, and 61 studies were included in the final analysis. After the World Health Organization\'s declaration of an mpox public health emergency of international concern in July 2022, the number of related studies began growing rapidly. Google was the most widely used search engine platform (9/61, 15%), and Twitter was the most used social media app (32/61, 52%) for researchers. Researchers from 33 countries were concerned about mpox infodemic-related topics. Among them, the top 3 countries for article publication were the United States (27 studies), India (9 studies), and the United Kingdom (7 studies). Studies of online information search trends showed that mpox-related online search volume skyrocketed at the beginning of the mpox outbreak, especially when the World Health Organization provided important declarations. There was a large amount of misinformation with negative sentiment and discriminatory and hostile content against gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. Given the characteristics of the mpox infodemic, the studies provided several positive prevention and control measures, including the timely and active publishing of professional, high-quality, and easy-to-understand information online; strengthening surveillance and early warning for the infodemic based on internet data; and taking measures to protect key populations from the harm of the mpox infodemic.
CONCLUSIONS: This comprehensive summary of evidence from previous mpox infodemiology studies is valuable for understanding the characteristics of the mpox infodemic and for formulating prevention and control measures. It is essential for researchers and policy makers to establish prediction and early warning approaches and targeted intervention methods for dealing with the mpox infodemic in the future.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defined an infodemic as an overabundance of information, accurate or not, in the digital and physical space, accompanying an acute health event such as an outbreak or epidemic. It can impact people\'s risk perceptions, trust, and confidence in the health system, and health workers. As an immediate response, the WHO developed the infodemic management (IM) frameworks, research agenda, intervention frameworks, competencies, and processes for reference by health authorities.
This systematic review explored the response to and during acute health events by health authorities and other organizations operating in health. It also assessed the effectiveness of the current interventions.
On 26 June 2023, an online database search included Medline (Ovid), Embase, Cochrane Library, Scopus, Epistemonikos, and the WHO website. It included English-only, peer-reviewed studies or reports covering IM processes applied by health organizations that reported their effectiveness. There was no restriction on publication dates. Two independent reviewers conducted all screening, inclusion, and quality assessments, and a third reviewer arbitrated any disagreement between the two reviewers.
Reviewers identified 945 records. After a final assessment, 29 studies were included in the review and were published between 2021 and 2023. Some countries (Pakistan, Yemen, Spain, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, Finland, South Korea, and Russia) applied different methods of IM to people\'s behaviors. These included but were not limited to launching media and TV conservations, using web and scientific database searches, posting science-based COVID-19 information, implementing online surveys, and creating an innovative ecosystem of digital tools, and an Early AI-supported response with Social Listening (EARS) platform. Most of the interventions were effective in containing the harmful effects of COVID-19 infodemic. However, the quality of the evidence was not robust.
Most of the infodemic interventions applied during COVID-19 fall within the recommended actions of the WHO IM ecosystem. As a result, the study suggests that more research is needed into the challenges facing health systems in different operational environments and country contexts in relation to designing, implementing, and evaluating IM interventions, strategies, policies, and systems.

BACKGROUND: Public health surveillance plays a vital role in informing public health decision-making. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 caused a widespread shift in public health priorities. Global efforts focused on COVID-19 monitoring and contact tracing. Existing public health programs were interrupted due to physical distancing measures and reallocation of resources. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic intersected with advancements in technologies that have the potential to support public health surveillance efforts.
OBJECTIVE: This scoping review aims to explore emergent public health surveillance methods during the early COVID-19 pandemic to characterize the impact of the pandemic on surveillance methods.
METHODS: A scoping search was conducted in multiple databases and by scanning key government and public health organization websites from March 2020 to January 2022. Published papers and gray literature that described the application of new or revised approaches to public health surveillance were included. Papers that discussed the implications of novel public health surveillance approaches from ethical, legal, security, and equity perspectives were also included. The surveillance subject, method, location, and setting were extracted from each paper to identify trends in surveillance practices. Two public health epidemiologists were invited to provide their perspectives as peer reviewers.
RESULTS: Of the 14,238 unique papers, a total of 241 papers describing novel surveillance methods and changes to surveillance methods are included. Eighty papers were review papers and 161 were single studies. Overall, the literature heavily featured papers detailing surveillance of COVID-19 transmission (n=187). Surveillance of other infectious diseases was also described, including other pathogens (n=12). Other public health topics included vaccines (n=9), mental health (n=11), substance use (n=4), healthy nutrition (n=1), maternal and child health (n=3), antimicrobial resistance (n=2), and misinformation (n=6). The literature was dominated by applications of digital surveillance, for example, by using big data through mobility tracking and infodemiology (n=163). Wastewater surveillance was also heavily represented (n=48). Other papers described adaptations to programs or methods that existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (n=9). The scoping search also found 109 papers that discuss the ethical, legal, security, and equity implications of emerging surveillance methods. The peer reviewer public health epidemiologists noted that additional changes likely exist, beyond what has been reported and available for evidence syntheses.
CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated advancements in surveillance and the adoption of new technologies, especially for digital and wastewater surveillance methods. Given the investments in these systems, further applications for public health surveillance are likely. The literature for surveillance methods was dominated by surveillance of infectious diseases, particularly COVID-19. A substantial amount of literature on the ethical, legal, security, and equity implications of these emerging surveillance methods also points to a need for cautious consideration of potential harm.

The purpose of this scoping review was to summarize literature regarding the use of user-generated digital data collected for non-epidemiological purposes in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) research.
Thirty-nine papers were included in the final review. Four types of digital data were used: social media data, web search queries, mobile phone data, and data from global positioning system (GPS) devices. With these data, four HIV epidemiological objectives were pursued, including disease surveillance, behavioral surveillance, assessment of public attention to HIV, and characterization of risk contexts. Approximately one-third used machine learning for classification, prediction, or topic modeling. Less than a quarter discussed the ethics of using user-generated data for epidemiological purposes. User-generated digital data can be used to monitor, predict, and contextualize HIV risk and can help disrupt trajectories of risk closer to onset. However, more attention needs to be paid to digital ethics and the direction of the field in a post-Application Programming Interface (API) world.

Google Trends is a powerful online database and analytics tool of popular Google search queries over time and has the potential to inform medical practice and priorities.
This review aimed to survey Google Trends literature in dermatology and elucidate its current roles and relationships with the field.
A literature search was performed using PubMed to access and review relevant dermatology-related Google Trends studies published within the last 5 years.
Current research utilizing Google Trends data provides insight related to skin cancer, pruritus, cosmetic procedures, and COVID-19. We also found that dermatology is presently the highest-searched medical specialty-among 15 medical and surgical specialties as well as general practitioners. Google searches related to dermatology demonstrate a seasonal nature for various skin conditions and sun-related topics, depending on a region\'s inherent climate and hemi-sphere. In addition, celebrity social media and other viral posts have been found to potentiate Google searches about dermatology and drive public interest.
A limited number of relevant studies may have been omitted by the simplified search strategy of this study, as well as by restriction to English language articles and articles indexed in the PubMed database. This could be expanded upon in a secondary systematic review. Future re-search is warranted to better understand how Google Trends can be utilized to improve the quality of clinic visits, drive public health campaigns, and detect disease clusters in real time.

(1) Objective: to identify and review existing infodemiological studies on nutritional disorders applied to occupational health and to analyse the effect of the intervention on body mass index (BMI) or alternatively body weight (BW); (2) Methods: This study involved a critical analysis of articles retrieved from MEDLINE (via PubMed), Embase, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, Scopus, Web of Science, Latin American, and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature (LILACS) and Medicina en Español (MEDES) using the descriptors \"Nutrition Disorders, \"Occupational Health\" and \"Infodemiology\", applying the filters \"Humans\" and \"Adult: 19+ years\". The search was conducted on 29 May 2021; (3) Results: a total of 357 references were identified from the bibliographic database searches; after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 11 valid studies were obtained for the review. Interventions could be categorised into (1) interventions related to lifestyle, physical activity, and dietary changes through education programmes, (2) interventions associated with lifestyle, physical activity, and dietary changes through the use of telemonitoring systems or self-help applications, (3) interventions tied to lifestyle, physical activity, and dietary changes through control and/or social network support groups, and (4) interventions linked to changes in the work environment, including behavioural change training and work environment training tasks. The meta-analysis demonstrated that the heterogeneity present when analysing the results for BMI was 72% (p < 0.01), which decreased to 0% (p = 0.57) when analysing the outcomes for weight, in which case the null hypothesis of homogeneity could be accepted. In all instances, the final summary of the effect was on the decreasing side for both BMI and BW; (4) Conclusions: Despite the high heterogeneity of the results reported, the trend shown in all cases indicates that the intervention methodologies implemented by empowering individuals through Web 2.0 technologies are positive in terms of the problem of overweight. Further implementation of novel strategies to support individuals is needed to overcome obesity, and, at least in the early studies, these strategies seem to be making the necessary change.

The internet is a primary source of health information for patients, supplementing physician care. Google Trends (GT), a popular tool, allows the exploration of public interest in health-related phenomena. Despite the growing volume of GT studies, none have focused explicitly on oncology, creating a need for a systematic review to bridge this gap.
We aimed to systematically characterize studies related to oncology using GT to describe its utilities and biases.
We included all studies that used GT to analyze Google searches related to malignancies. We excluded studies written in languages other than English. The search was performed using the PubMed engine on August 1, 2022. We used the following search input: \"Google trends\" AND (\"oncology\" OR \"cancer\" or \"malignancy\" OR \"tumor\" OR \"lymphoma\" OR \"multiple myeloma\" OR \"leukemia\"). We analyzed sources of bias that included using search terms instead of topics, lack of confrontation of GT statistics with real-world data, and absence of sensitivity analysis. We performed descriptive statistics.
A total of 85 articles were included. The first study using GT for oncology research was published in 2013, and since then, the number of publications has increased annually. The studies were categorized as follows: 22% (19/85) were related to prophylaxis, 20% (17/85) pertained to awareness events, 11% (9/85) were celebrity-related, 13% (11/85) were related to COVID-19, and 47% (40/85) fell into other categories. The most frequently analyzed cancers were breast (n=28), prostate (n=26), lung (n=18), and colorectal cancers (n=18). We discovered that of the 85 studies, 17 (20%) acknowledged using GT topics instead of search terms, 79 (93%) disclosed all search input details necessary for replicating their results, and 34 (40%) compared GT statistics with real-world data. The most prevalent methods for analyzing the GT data were correlation analysis (55/85, 65%) and peak analysis (43/85, 51%). The authors of only 11% (9/85) of the studies performed a sensitivity analysis.
The number of studies related to oncology using GT data has increased annually. The studies included in this systematic review demonstrate a variety of concerning topics, search strategies, and statistical methodologies. The most frequently analyzed cancers were breast, prostate, lung, colorectal, skin, and cervical cancers, potentially reflecting their prevalence in the population or public interest. Although most researchers provided reproducible search inputs, only one-fifth used GT topics instead of search terms, and many studies lacked a sensitivity analysis. Scientists using GT for medical research should ensure the quality of studies by providing a transparent search strategy to reproduce results, preferring to use topics over search terms, and performing robust statistical calculations coupled with sensitivity analysis.

Wikipedia is an open-source online encyclopedia and one of the most-read sources of online health information. Likewise, Wikipedia page views have also been analyzed to inform public health services and policies. The present review analyzed 29 studies utilizing Wikipedia page views for health research. Most reviewed studies were published in recent years and emanated from high-income countries. Together with Wikipedia page views, most studies also used data from other internet sources, such as Google, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit. The reviewed studies also explored various non-communicable diseases, infectious diseases, and health interventions to describe changes in the utilization of online health information from Wikipedia, to examine the effect of public events on public interest and information usage about health-related Wikipedia pages, to estimate and predict the incidence and prevalence of diseases, to predict data from other internet data sources, to evaluate the effectiveness of health education activities, and to explore the evolution of a health topic. Given some of the limitations in replicating some of the reviewed studies, future research can specify the specific Wikipedia page or pages analyzed, the language of the Wikipedia pages examined, dates of data collection, dates explored, type of data, and whether page views were limited to Internet users and whether web crawlers and redirects to the Wikipedia page were included. Future research can also explore public interest in other commonly read health topics available in Wikipedia, develop Wikipedia-based models that can be used to predict disease incidence and improve Wikipedia-based health education activities.

Following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019, adequate public information was of outmost importance. The public used the Web extensively to read information about the pandemic, which placed significant responsibility in, for many, an unfamiliar situation as the disease spread across the globe. The aim of this review was to synthesize the quality of web-based information concerning the coronavirus disease 2019 published during the first year of the pandemic.
A rapid systematic review was undertaken by searching five electronic databases (CINAHL, Communication & Mass Media Complete, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus). Empirical infodemiology reports assessing quality of information were included (n = 22). Methodological quality and risk of bias was appraised with tools modified from previous research, while quality assessment scores were synthesized with descriptive statistics. Topics illustrating comprehensiveness were categorized with content analysis.
The included reports assessed text-based content (n = 13) and videos (n = 9). Most were rated good overall methodological quality (n = 17). In total, the reports evaluated 2,654 websites or videos and utilized 46 assessors. The majority of the reports concluded that websites and videos had poor quality (n = 20). Collectively, readability levels exceeded the recommended sixth grade level. There were large variations in ranges of the reported mean or median quality scores, with 13 of 15 total sample scores being classified as poor or moderate quality. Four studies reported that ≥ 28% of websites contained inaccurate statements. There were large variations in prevalence for the six categories illustrating comprehensiveness.
The results highlight quality deficits of web-based information about COVID-19 published during the first year of the pandemic, suggesting a high probability that this hindered the general population from being adequately informed when faced with the new and unfamiliar situation. Future research should address the highlighted quality deficits, identify methods that aid citizens in their information retrieval, and identify interventions that aim to improve the quality of information in the online landscape.

BACKGROUND: Increasing affordability, accessibility and penetration of internet services worldwide, have substantially changed the ways of gathering health-related information. This has led to the origin of concept infodemiology that allows the information to be collected and analysed in near real time. Globally, oral diseases affect nearly 3.5 billion people; thus, volume and profile of oral health searches would help in understanding specific community dental needs and formulation of pertinent oral health strategies.
OBJECTIVE: To review the published literature on infodemiological aspects of oral health and disease.
METHODS: This scoping review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Electronic search engines (Google Scholar) and databases (PubMed, Web of science, Scopus) were searched from 2002 onwards.
RESULTS: Thirty-eight articles were included in this review. The infodemiological studies for oral health and disease were mainly used in two domains. Out of 38 articles, 24 accessed the quality of available online information and 15 studied online oral health-related information seeking behaviour.
CONCLUSIONS: The most commonly searched oral diseases were toothache, oral cancer, dental caries, periodontal disease, oral maxillofacial surgical procedures and paediatric oral diseases. Most of the studies belonged to developed countries and Google was the most researched search engine.