The Effect of Financial Conflict of Interest, Disclosure Status, and Relevance on Medical Research from the United States

Terri Schiavo died on March 31, 2005, at the age of 41. Virtually thousands of others died or lay dying on that day throughout the world, yet the death of Terri Schiavo gripped not only the attention of the media throughout the United States and much of the world, but the attention of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. President, the Vatican, and millions in the United States and around the world. Why? Well, in the words of U.S. President George Bush, “The case of Terri Schiavo raises complex issues…. Those who live at the mercy of others deserve our special care and concern. It should be our goal as a nation to build a culture of life, where all Americans are valued, welcomed, and protected—and that culture of life must extend to individuals with disabilities” (The New York Times, March 31, 2005). Terri Schiavo, in her persistent vegetative state of 15 years duration, was being kept alive, in her Florida hospice bed, with the help of a feeding tube that artificially delivered fluids and nutrition. The attempts of her husband over the last 7 years, in opposition to the wishes of his wife's parents, to remove the feeding tube and allow his wife to die have created a firestorm of controversy and debate in judicial, medical, political, ethical, moral, and religious arenas. When Terri Schiavo died, some 13 days after the feeding tube was removed, the noted civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson said, “She was starved and dehydrated to death!” (The New York Times, March 31, 2005). A Vatican spokesman said “Exceptions cannot be allowed to the principle of the sacredness of life from conception to its natural death” (The New York Times, March 31, 2005). Clearly, the death of Terri Schiavo rekindled a variety of debates that were perhaps dormant but unresolved. The political debate in the United States and the appropriateness of steps taken by the U.S. President and Congress will likely continue through the next cycle of elections and the process of selecting and approving judicial nominations. They will also, undoubtedly, influence several aspects of medical research and practice including end-of-life care. The religious and moral debates regarding the sanctity of life will continue and also significantly impact on medical research and medical practice. For those interested in reading more about these particular issues I refer you to two excellent pieces in the April 21, 2005, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (i.e., Annas, 2005; Quill, 2005). For clinicians and researchers in palliative care, however, the death of Terri Schiavo has raised some rather specific clinical and research issues that must be addressed. These issues pertain primarily to the experience of suffering in the dying process.

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Systematic Evaluation of Research Progress on Natural Language Processing in Medicine Over the Past 20 Years: Bibliometric Study on PubMed

Journal of Medical Internet Research ◽

10.2196/16816 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. e16816 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Jing Wang ◽

Huan Deng ◽

Bangtao Liu ◽

Anbin Hu ◽

Jun Liang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Systematic Review ◽

Natural Language Processing ◽

Natural Language ◽

Medical Research ◽

Language Processing ◽

The United States ◽

Columbia University ◽

Medical Field ◽

Number Of Publications

Background Natural language processing (NLP) is an important traditional field in computer science, but its application in medical research has faced many challenges. With the extensive digitalization of medical information globally and increasing importance of understanding and mining big data in the medical field, NLP is becoming more crucial. Objective The goal of the research was to perform a systematic review on the use of NLP in medical research with the aim of understanding the global progress on NLP research outcomes, content, methods, and study groups involved. Methods A systematic review was conducted using the PubMed database as a search platform. All published studies on the application of NLP in medicine (except biomedicine) during the 20 years between 1999 and 2018 were retrieved. The data obtained from these published studies were cleaned and structured. Excel (Microsoft Corp) and VOSviewer (Nees Jan van Eck and Ludo Waltman) were used to perform bibliometric analysis of publication trends, author orders, countries, institutions, collaboration relationships, research hot spots, diseases studied, and research methods. Results A total of 3498 articles were obtained during initial screening, and 2336 articles were found to meet the study criteria after manual screening. The number of publications increased every year, with a significant growth after 2012 (number of publications ranged from 148 to a maximum of 302 annually). The United States has occupied the leading position since the inception of the field, with the largest number of articles published. The United States contributed to 63.01% (1472/2336) of all publications, followed by France (5.44%, 127/2336) and the United Kingdom (3.51%, 82/2336). The author with the largest number of articles published was Hongfang Liu (70), while Stéphane Meystre (17) and Hua Xu (33) published the largest number of articles as the first and corresponding authors. Among the first author’s affiliation institution, Columbia University published the largest number of articles, accounting for 4.54% (106/2336) of the total. Specifically, approximately one-fifth (17.68%, 413/2336) of the articles involved research on specific diseases, and the subject areas primarily focused on mental illness (16.46%, 68/413), breast cancer (5.81%, 24/413), and pneumonia (4.12%, 17/413). Conclusions NLP is in a period of robust development in the medical field, with an average of approximately 100 publications annually. Electronic medical records were the most used research materials, but social media such as Twitter have become important research materials since 2015. Cancer (24.94%, 103/413) was the most common subject area in NLP-assisted medical research on diseases, with breast cancers (23.30%, 24/103) and lung cancers (14.56%, 15/103) accounting for the highest proportions of studies. Columbia University and the talents trained therein were the most active and prolific research forces on NLP in the medical field.

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