Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39812653›Full record

ArticleJMIR infodemiology2025

Transformer-Based Tool for Automated Fact-Checking of Online Health Information: Development Study.

Azadeh Bayani, Alexandre Ayotte, Jean Noel Nikiema

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in JMIR infodemiology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Azadeh BayaniLaboratoire Transformation Numérique en Santé, LabTNS, Montreal, QC, Canada.ORCID 0009-0002-7707-9602
Alexandre Ayotte *Laboratoire Transformation Numérique en Santé, LabTNS, Montreal, QC, Canada.ORCID 0009-0007-0739-0178
Jean Noel Nikiema *Laboratoire Transformation Numérique en Santé, LabTNS, Montreal, QC, Canada.ORCID 0000-0002-9396-6423

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundMany people seek health-related information online. The significance of reliable information became particularly evident due to the potential dangers of misinformation. Therefore, discerning true and reliable information from false information has become increasingly challenging.

objectiveThis study aimed to present a pilot study in which we introduced a novel approach to automate the fact-checking process, leveraging PubMed resources as a source of truth using natural language processing transformer models to enhance the process.

methodsA total of 538 health-related web pages, covering 7 different disease subjects, were manually selected by Factually Health Company. The process included the following steps: (1) using transformer models of bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT), BioBERT, and SciBERT, and traditional models of random forests and support vector machines, to classify the contents of web pages into 3 thematic categories (semiology, epidemiology, and management), (2) for each category in the web pages, a PubMed query was automatically produced using a combination of the "WellcomeBertMesh" and "KeyBERT" models, (3) top 20 related literatures were automatically extracted from PubMed, and finally, (4) the similarity checking techniques of cosine similarity and Jaccard distance were applied to compare the content of extracted literature and web pages.

resultsThe BERT model for the categorization of web page contents had good performance, with F

conclusionsIn this pilot study, we have proposed an approach to automate the fact-checking of health-related online information. Incorporating content from PubMed or other scientific article databases as trustworthy resources can automate the discovery of similarly credible information in the health domain.

Indexed as

Consumer Health InformationInternetNatural Language ProcessingHumansPilot ProjectsPubMedautomatedcredible health informationepidemiologyfact-checking automationhealth domaininfodemicmachine learningmisinformationnatural language processingonline health informationtransformers

Identifiers

PMID39812653
PMCPMC11890130

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.