Open Access

ARTICLE

Strength in numbers: Crowdsourcing the most relevant literature in pediatric cardiology

by

1 Lillie Frank Abercrombie Section of Cardiology, Department of Pediatrics, Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas
2 Division of Cardiology, Department of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
3 The Heart Institute, Division of Pediatric Cardiology, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
4 Section of Critical Care Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas

* Corresponding Author: Joseph J. Knadler, Lillie Frank Abercrombie Section of Cardiology, Department of Pediatrics, Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine, 6621 Fannin Street, MC 19345‐C, Houston, Texas 77030. Email:

Congenital Heart Disease 2018, 13(5), 794-798. https://doi.org/10.1111/chd.12669

Abstract

Objective: The growing body of medical literature in pediatric cardiology has made it increasingly difficult for individual providers to stay abreast of the most current, meaningful articles to help guide practice. Crowdsourcing represents a collaborative process of obtaining information from a large group of individuals, typically from an online or web‐based community, and could serve a potential mechanism to pool indi‐ vidual efforts to combat this issue. This study aimed to utilize crowdsourcing as a novel way to generate a list of the most relevant, current publications in congenital heart disease, utilizing input from an international group of professionals in the field of pediatric cardiology.
Design and Setting: All members of the PediHeartNet Google group, an international email distribution list of medical professionals with an interest in pediatric cardiology, were queried in 2017 to submit literature that they considered to be most relevant to their current practice. A Google Form submission platform was used. The articles were evaluated by a multi‐institutional panel of four experts in pediatric cardiology using the Delphi method via an electronic evaluation form until a consensus was reached regarding whether the article merited inclusion in the final list.
Results: In total, 260 articles were submitted by members of the PediHeartNet Google group. Expert review using the Delphi method resulted in a list of 108 arti‐ cles. The final collection of articles was published on a publicly available educational website.
Conclusions: Crowdsourcing represents a novel approach for generating a high‐yield, comprehensive, yet practical list of the most relevant recent publications in pediatric cardiology. The same techniques could be easily applied to any medical subspecialty. By enlisting the input of frontline providers, the value and relevance of such a list will be significant. A web‐based platform for publication of the list allows for real‐time updates to ensure continued relevance.

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