Health Care Crowds: Collective Intelligence in Public Health

TL;DR

This paper reviews how crowdsourcing is used in public health, identifying three main application areas and discussing potential implications and future research directions.

Contribution

It provides an early systematic review of crowdsourcing methods and applications in public health, categorizing outcomes and highlighting research gaps.

Findings

Collective intelligence is applied in health promotion, research, and maintenance.

All three known crowdsourcing forms are utilized in public health.

The study outlines potential implications and future research avenues.

Abstract

For what purposes are crowds being implemented in health care? Which crowdsourcing methods are being used? This work begins to answer these questions by reporting the early results of a systematic literature review of 110 pieces of relevant research. The results of this exploratory research in progress reveals that collective intelligence outcomes are being generated in three broad categories of public health care; health promotion, health research, and health maintenance, using all three known forms of crowdsourcing. Stemming from this fundamental analysis, some potential implications of the research are discussed and useful future research is outlined.