How To make the most Of The DHV-ORACLE
We want to improve our ability to help you find the right information at the right time. We welcome your feedback and your ideas (via info@dhv-net.com) and in this section, we'll keep you up to speed with our learning and discoveries on how to use the ORACLE with hints and tips beyond the user guide.
recent updates
01.10.23 Quality over quantity
An editorial decision to focus on quality of content over quantity has been taken. In addition, only key current affairs stories will be included. This decision "reduces noise" and thus will enhance the main purpose of the ORACLE which is to provide a searchable archive of high quality content as well as reflecting current affairs.
14.08.23 Highlights
New category introduced based on subscriber feedback which aims to highlight some of the most interesting articles in the opinion of the editorial team.
20.06.23: New Channel: "Impact Earth": After much deliberation, we have decided to include a new channel that reflects the impact of man kind on our planet. Although the only aspect of DHV-NET not focused on digital health, it reflects one of the key aspects of DHV-NET; our contribution to reducing the impact of business activity on the planet by offering greener alternatives to business travel and consumption. We know the focus for our subscribers is digital health therefore posts will be infrequent and the channel will appear at the bottom of the channel drop down menu.
20.06.23 New channel: Clinical Trials
Please note: As the previous channel "Trials, Evidence & Regulation" has been modified to "Evidence & Regulation", it will contain residual articles on clinical trials.
01.06.23 Tag search introduced along with initial cluster of tag terms.
Keeping up to date
There's no ducking it! Keeping up to date requires some effort and organisation even when using the ORACLE. Here are a few suggestions based on our own experience.
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Whatever your approach, create a habit (and put a place holder in your diary to support your habit).
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Don't ever log out of your account; check in at the same time to view the latest articles (few people have the time or discipline to do this!).
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The feed can be overwhelming so if you don't check frequently, use the categories or tags to focus your efforts.
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Check the bi-weekly summary every Friday to scan through the list of articles published OR
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Sign up to the ORACLE news letter to receive an email of the bi-weekly summary which lists all articles in the previous week.
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Click on the articles and then use your "bookmark function" in your browser to mark them for reading later.
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You can use the share options at the bottom of each article to send particular articles of interest to yourself or colleagues via social media or you can post them directly onto social media.
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effective searching
This is something we do a lot, after all, the ORACLE was originally designed to support our consulting activity.
Your approach will depend to an extent on the task ahead of you.
"A refresh" Occasionally, we find the need to refresh our knowledge of a particular area (or a subject may have caught your interest and you want to know more). In such cases we use the channel or tag search if applicable and then scroll... opening the articles with headlines that appear most relevant. After a review of the summaries, we then open the original articles and scan them, closing any that don't appear to be so relevant. Depending on the topic, we may end up with a short list or a long list of articles for review. Even a long list can be quickly distilled down and we prefer to start with more than less.
Using the key word search can be more powerful if your subject of interest isn't cleanly covered by tags or categories. Here are a few tips:
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Use the first few letters of your word as a search term. For example, if you're interested in cardiology enter the term "cardio". The search results will pick up "CARDIOlogy" "CARDIOvascular" "CARDIOmetabolic" "CARDIOgram" "CARDIOlogist" and so on. Cardiology is covered by a word tag but as tags were introduced relatively recently a word search will be more comprehensive.
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You can use two or more words or word fragments. For example you might be interested in the use of AI in cardiology in which case use the search terms "Cardio" & "AI" but equally, remembering to use word fragments, you could try "card" and "art". You'll see that the latter produces more result but with some spurious inclusions such as "In Digital Transformation, The Hardest Part Is Discarding The Past" but when searching for more specific/obscure topics, we choose search terms designed to capture as many results as possible; reviewing headlines is quick and easy.
"Deep Dive" Sometimes we have to carry out in-depth research. We'll combine other resources (standard search engine results, specialist databases (see "Other Resources" category) and even specialist academic search engines) with output from the ORACLE. We will perform the searches as described above but then use links/citations in the recovered articles to find more reading material. The inclusion of review articles in the ORACLE can of course be a great starting place but many of the news articles also contain links/references which can be worth pursuing.
We hope this helps you on your way and for subscribers, please don't hesitate to contact us on info@dhv-net.com for advice.
article summaries
If you find good content in the ORACLE but it's too long or you just don't have time, simply sign in (or create an account) to Open AI and enter your link preceded by TLDR (too long didn't read). You'll receive a sensible summary of the original article (this may not work with some recent articles but its not clear to us why some work and some don't). Other summary apps/services are available.
Here's an example:
ChatGPT Output:
The article emphasizes the importance of holding digital therapeutic innovations to the same rigorous standards as biotech innovations. It highlights the rapid growth of digital therapeutics and their potential to revolutionize healthcare. However, the author argues that the field must prioritize evidence-based approaches, rigorous clinical trials, and regulatory scrutiny to ensure patient safety and efficacy. The article calls for collaboration between digital health companies, healthcare providers, and regulatory bodies to establish standardized evaluation methods and ensure that digital therapeutics meet the same standards as traditional biotech therapies.
We share your interest and enthusiasm in digital health and perhaps you also share some of our frustrations? Digital health has become so broad, complex and rapidly evolving:
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How do you keep up to speed?
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How do you find the right information when you need it?
There are many ways in which we tried:
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Search Engines: Perhaps the obvious place to start but they are actually very limiting on both fronts. Try entering a digital-health related search term and you'll see pages of links to content that is typically a mix of current and out dated information, content that is biased by your location and content that is of questionable quality.
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"Google Alerts". It's possible to set up key word alerts in Google and other search engines such that a list of links is periodically delivered to your inbox based on key words or phrases. We have used these and they can deliver good content but quality is not assured and of course, there's no archive or way to search current or previous content.
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Online News Portals. There are literally hundreds of online news outlets many of which provide free content and some of which are accessed through paywalls. A minority are focused on digital health whereas others taker a wider view of heath, care the life sciences whilst others are technology focused but all occasionally publish valuable content on digital health. You just can't follow them all.
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Large Language Models: ChatGPT caused a storm at the end of 2022 and now we're all getting to grip with large language models. They can be surprisingly sophisticated at answering questions and summarising articles but a number of issues have been highlighted.
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Many models don't use current information sources so their response is based on "last year's data".
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The accuracy of response has been called into question - everything from creating false references to blatant misinformation.
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Their insights into digital health-related topics can be surprisingly good and can act as a good introduction to a subject but you still need to access third party content to either keep up to date or drill down to support your research efforts.
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"Scientific Search Engines": A range of more dated and new, AI-powered search tools are available to support research needs many of which are very useful. When researching a digital health related topic, there is much to be learnt from reading widely outside of academic publications and so they provide a useful part of your search capabilities much as the options listed above.
So for all our efforts, we were left frustrated when deep diving to support our research needs or were simply overwhelmed when trying to keep up to date. We needed access to:
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Current information (less than 18 months old).
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Quality information (there's plenty of "fluff and junk" out there).
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Information not biased by our location.
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An information mix; news, white papers, scientific publications... with academic and industry views from all the players in digital health (payers, providers, consumers, retail etc.)
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A current daily stream feeding into an archive.
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The ability to find information by theme or search term or by tags.
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A feed that would capture other information resources such as journals, podcasts, company databases, data sources etc to save us storing these on Excel sheets (as we used to).
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And we wanted it to be presented in a convenient and attractive fashion and for it to change to reflect the changing nature of digital health
And so we created the ORACLE.
With reference to the changing nature of digital health, we were determined that the ORACLE should be flexible enough to mirror the sectors continued evolution and could be easily changed to accommodate changing interests.
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The ORACLE engine which tracks several hundred online news sites, journals, influencers etc can change and/or expand its data sources.
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The editorial function in which experienced editors select content for the feed, is regularly reviewed.
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The category channels and tags can change (and have changed) to reflect the evolution of the sector.
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Given how broad the sector is and how diverse our subscribers interest could be, the system (from content sources, selection criteria through channel themes and tags) is designed to easily accommodate bespoke requests to support the individual needs of subscribers.
That's all in place.
So after a year in Beta testing and feedback, we are ready to go and we hope you join us as we track the evolution of the fascinating and challenging sector.
