Survey
Survey Questionnaire
Through interviews with doctors, we recognized the importance of accurate diagnosis for disease prevention and treatment. We also wanted to investigate the impact of precision medicine on the public in real life.
So, starting from the topic of brainstorming, the BUCT-China team conducted a public survey on precision diagnosis, hoping to further explore the value of the project and guide the research direction of the BUCT-China team's IGEM journey this year, and provide new ideas for the development of human practice activities!
At the beginning of the survey questionnaire, BUCT-China team members invited doctors from the hospital of Beijing University of Chemical Technology to provide professional guidance on the setting of some questions in the questionnaire. After the initial version was completed, they were also invited to fill out the survey questionnaire and give modification opinions.
After confirming that there were no errors in professional knowledge in the questionnaire, BUCT-China decided to distribute the questionnaire through a combination of online and offline methods to collect more comprehensive and specific data! (Details of the questionnaire can be seen by scanning the QR code)
Figure: BUCT-China asked physicians for their suggestions for the questionnaire
The survey questionnaire and results analysis are as follows:
This survey adopted a combination of online and offline questionnaire distribution methods, and a total of 477 valid questionnaires were collected. The survey covered different genders, age groups, living environments (rural or urban) and regions to ensure the breadth of the survey objects and the universality of the survey results. During the survey, all respondent information was used only for research analysis, and anonymous surveys were conducted to strictly protect the personal privacy of respondents. The statistical results are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Survey sample source statistics
In order to objectively investigate the respondents' ability to accurately judge their own infection type, this questionnaire designed two "basic knowledge" questions encountered in daily life, and the results are shown in Figure 2:
Figure 2. Answers to basic diagnostic knowledge questions
Among them, only 56% got one question right, 24% got both questions wrong, and only 20% got all questions right; it can be seen that the public's ability to accurately judge their own infection type still needs to be improved, and it may be a common problem in daily life that it is difficult to make accurate judgments on their own.
Click to see the details of this question
Question (1) If someone has a sore throat, fever, coughing, and purulent secretions, what is the most likely cause?
A. Bacterial infection B. Viral infection C. Unclear
Question (2) Which of the following are commonly used drugs for colds caused by bacterial infections? [Multiple choice]
A. Cefaclor B. Ofloxacin C. Paracetamol D. Oseltamivir
This also suggests that we can popularize relevant knowledge to the public through education and publicity to improve the public's daily medical knowledge. In the subsequent project advancement, we also carried out relevant education and publicity, please see Education for details.
Figure: BUCT-China carries out extensive publicity activities to improve public health awareness
Combining this statistical data with the distribution of survey objects, we can get more valuable data:
We surveyed the medical areas of the respondents in their daily lives, and combined with the answers to the "basic knowledge questions", we obtained the distribution map:
Figure 3. Answers of rural and urban residents to basic diagnostic knowledge questions
From Figure 3, only 10% of rural residents could answer both questions completely correctly, far lower than 24% of urban residents.
This suggests that for underdeveloped areas, accurate diagnosis may be relatively more difficult, and there may be more misdiagnosed patients in these areas. This also suggests potential stakeholders that we should focus on.
- In addition, the results of these two analyses also pointed out the key groups for HP's education. We also adopted more extensive methods to popularize relevant knowledge to people in different regions through social media, promoting human social development. See Educationfor details.
Figure: BUCT-China uses various social platforms to continuously publicize the team's concept of precision diagnosis
In the survey "What is your first reaction when you encounter symptoms such as colds, fevers, and sore throats in your daily life?", the results are as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Survey results of "What is your first reaction when you encounter symptoms such as colds, fevers, and sore throats in your daily life?"
We can see that the vast majority of people choose "Take antibiotics/antiviral drugs directly" (32%) and "See medical attention immediately for necessary laboratory tests" (41%).For the group who chose "Take antibiotics/antiviral drugs directly", combined with their answers to the basic diagnostic knowledge questions, we can get the following result (Figure 5):
Figure 5. For the group who chose "Take antibiotics/antiviral drugs directly", combined with their answers to the basic diagnostic knowledge questions
Only 19% could choose correctly, which also shows that there may be many cases where misdiagnosis and mistreatment occur due to their own misjudgment, delaying treatment. This also worries us that misdiagnosis due to subjective judgment may not only occur in colds and fevers, but may also occur in the diagnosis of other diseases.
We designed a questionnaire to investigate "whether there have been cases of misdiagnosis due to unclear causes of disease", and the results are as follows:
Figure 6. Survey on "whether there have been cases of misdiagnosis due to unclear causes of disease"
Misdiagnosis actually occurs frequently, but most do not result in malignancy. Nevertheless, this should also arouse our attention, after all, none of us wants to be the "unlucky one".
- The phenomenon is related to the current rapid mutation of many diseases, resulting in similar symptoms that existing technologies cannot accurately identify; it is also related to the public's lack of self-protection awareness. People tend to believe in the wishful thinking that they only have temporary physical discomfort, or lack of basic diagnostic knowledge reserves, which lays hidden dangers for adverse consequences after misdiagnosis. Both technology needs to be innovated, and education for the public should be widely promoted.
For those who choose to deal with physical illnesses on their own, we are worried that they cannot make accurate judgmenimgts, delaying treatment; the medical experience of those who are used to seeking medical attention immediately when they are uncomfortable is also very important. Therefore, we wanted to understand what deficiencies exist in the current diagnosis and treatment methods from the public's perspective that affect people's medical choices.
We designed an investigation of "What are the deficiencies in existing diagnostic methods in previous medical treatment processes? (Multiple choice)", and the results are shown in Figure 7:
Figure 7. Survey results of "What are the deficiencies in existing diagnostic methods in previous medical treatment processes? (Multiple choice)"
15% of people chose "Low accuracy, prone to misdiagnosis", indicating that even though current medical diagnostic methods are relatively advanced, there are still misdiagnoses, causing patients to not receive timely treatment. We need a new method to achieve more accurate diagnosis;
11% of people chose "Diagnostic methods are more painful (such as blood draws, endoscopy)", for people afraid of blood draws and children, blood draws are something that needs to overcome psychological barriers, which also leads to resistance among some groups of people. Diagnostic procedures such as gastroscopy and colonoscopy are also accompanied by significant physiological discomfort, affecting people's willingness to diagnose, which also suggests that we need a new technology to achieve less discomfort and improve the diagnostic experience.
19% chose "Diagnosis and waiting for diagnostic results takes a long time". For the diagnosis of more complex diseases, various detection devices are sometimes required to cooperate, whether it is the diagnostic process or the process of analyzing the results, it takes patients a lot of time, which also suggests that we need a faster detection method to increase the public's willingness to diagnose.
21% of people chose "Diagnosis is expensive". Although the cost of some tests has been decreasing year by year, screening for certain diseases still requires considerable diagnostic expenses. The annual recommended physical examinations also cause many people to give up because of the high examination fees. This suggests that we should look for lower-cost detection methods.
23% of people chose "The medical level in the area where they live is low, and medical diagnosis is not convenient enough". In further investigations, we also found that for relatively backward areas, many advanced detection devices cannot be introduced, which causes patients to have to go to medically developed areas for diagnosis, causing great inconvenience to patients. Therefore, it also suggests that we need a simpler technology.
Only 11% of people think "everything is fine", which also suggests that we need to understand the demands of patients and optimize diagnostic methods.
This survey also pointed out the public appeal to BUCT-China team, how to achieve higher accuracy, shorter detection time, simpler detection methods, less painful detection procedures, which will be the direction that our team needs to think carefully about and strive to achieve in iGEM 2023.
After understanding the deficiencies of the current situation, we had a general idea of the direction of technology research and development. The results of the questionnaire survey "If there is a new technology that can improve the accuracy, shorten the diagnosis time, reduce pain, and achieve more convenient diagnosis as much as possible, what are your expectations? (1 to 5, the larger the number, the higher the expectation)" are shown in Figure 8:
Figure 8. Public expectations for the research and development of newprecision diagnostic methods
It can be seen that most people chose 4 points and 5 points (totaling 369). The public has great expectations for more efficient new technologies, which also inspired the BUCT-China team to contribute to them by developing new diagnostic technologies and fulfilling their social responsibilities!
Technological innovation is the direction BUCT-China strives for, and educating the public more extensively is also the social responsibility they should undertake. After understanding that there are knowledge gaps in the public's medical diagnosis and treatment knowledge, in order to more extensively and effectively carry out educational activities, we investigated their views on "What are the deficiencies in the popularization of medical diagnostic knowledge", and got the following results:
Figure 9. Survey results of "What are the deficiencies in the popularization of medical diagnostic knowledge"
It can be seen that for the current popular science activities related to medical diagnosis and treatment, the public pointed out many deficiencies, such as single popularization methods, lack of interesting content in popularization, poor popularization effects, and little actual help. In particular, the single form of popularization reduces the participation interest of the public, and the proportion of people choosing this item accounted for (32%). For educational activities, the public also hopes to learn more practical knowledge through interesting ways. This also inspired the BUCT-China team to adopt more interesting and diverse methods such as fun debates and uploading popular science videos on major platforms to carry out social practice activities. See Education for details.
Figure: BUCT-China adopts more diverse and interesting methods for publicity activities
Summary
Through the distribution of questionnaire 1.0, the BUCT-China team found that misdiagnosis is not an isolated case and affects our health. It also fully recognizes the actual needs of the public for accurate diagnosis, understands the public's demands for new technologies, namely higher accuracy, shorter detection time, simpler detection methods, and less painful detection procedures. How to achieve these goals and make technology better serve the society aroused BUCT-China's thinking.
Not only that, through the questionnaire, we got to know more potential stakeholders. In order to give them the greatest help, we also conducted extensive interviews to deeply understand their demands (see Interview Series 2.0 for details). In addition, this survey also broadened the ideas for BUCT-China's social practice activities. We will carry out educational activities in a more extensive, vivid and interesting way, hoping that under our promotion activities, more people will recognize the importance of precision medicine! (See Education for details)