Although means of collecting data have been greatly developed, fewer improvements were seen for the tools used for measuring pain. The upgrade from pencil-paper to finger-touchscreen interaction provides us with more possibilities including more accurate and timely data capture, and there is a need for an upgrade of the traditional pain scale so that a new pain scale can optimize the potential of smart devices without losing validity and reliability. Evidence revealed that electronically measured VAS, NRS, and FPS have the same performance as those measured by paper and pen [8]. However, VAS and NRS are less appealing to patients compared with FPS [4]. FPS, compared with other types of pain scales, is preferred by people from all age groups and is especially suitable for children and those with cognitive impairment [12,13]. Widely applied FPSs are the Wong-Baker FACES pain rating scale (Wong-Baker FACES) and the faces pain scale-revised (FPS-R), but both of them were developed years ago, and they were designed in monotonic color, which might not be as appealing as colorful faces on digital devices [14,15]. Additionally, traditional FPS might require approval before use and even potential royal fees for commercial applications. As images, it is difficult to guarantee that these traditional scales can fit properly on web pages or mobile apps without being distorted due to a variation in screen sizes and devices. One advantage of using faces to measure pain is that it is more self-explanatory than other types of scales. Using face images that are already popular with users might be more efficient to apply. As pictographs that are typically presented in a colorful form and used inline in text, emoji conform to the Unicode standard and are characterized by standardization and universality. Compared with images, it is flexible to adapt Emoji-FPS to mobile devices without additional image download as emoji have become a preloaded digital set of images that can work across platforms [6]. In addition, emoji are open-source, and they can be easily obtained without approval from anyone.
Digital device users are not unfamiliar with emoji faces such as , , and [6,16]. Until September 2021, a total of 3633 emoji had been created. Among all those emoji, at least 126 face-related emoji can be regarded as potential candidate faces to construct a pain scale. Face pain scales made of emoji faces might be more generalizable to more populations because emoji are not specific to a certain group of people. A certain sequence of emoji faces that can best measure levels of pain needs to be determined before they are applied.
It is not surprising that the Emoji-FPS was preferred by patients, followed by the Wong-Baker FACES, FPS-R, NRS, and VAS. Colorful and intuitive images could be more attractive to users than monotonic and abstract images, especially on mobile devices. In addition, emoji have fewer details than Wong-Baker FACES and FPS-R. While these details can make faces of different pain levels more distinguishable, excessive details might make users think that these faces no longer look like them, for example, if patients have a different gender, age, or race. Emoji are more concisely designed and are not limited to these specific characteristics, so they have the potential to be applied regardless of age, gender, and race.
These face scales have been expanded to incorporate motion emoticons and animated emojis to help overcome major barriers in pediatric patient management, such as dental anxiety in children. Fear of dental visits or unwarranted distress over dental procedures is common and may continue into adulthood, contributing to the neglect of oral health. Therefore, early recognition and assessment of dental anxiety is important to identify those needing special assistance or additional support [17]. A comparison of anxiety scales was undertaken to determine an ideal anxiety scale that was easy and efficient to use clinically, appealing, and applicable to younger children with limited cognition and linguistic ability. A newly designed animated emoji scale tested at dental visits for healthy children aged 4 to 14 years showed a high correlation with other common scales, including a face scale; however, the animated emoji scale displayed on an electronic device was the preferred scale by 75% of children and was the expected preference over paper-printed still cartoons [17].
As in previous health care applications, emojis have been used effectively for educational purposes in public health. A proposal to introduce specific new Unicode emojis for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was instigated after bystander response time was identified as a crucial factor in improving extrahospital cardiac arrest outcomes [31]. Therefore, given the prevalence of emoji-heavy social media and electronic communication in daily life, the inclusion of new emojis illustrating the CPR rescue chain presents an opportunity to spread awareness about cardiac arrest safety to the public, overcome any language or cultural barriers, and allow for better retention of knowledge. The proposed CPR-related emojis encompassed 6 actions and 2 symbols: an unresponsive person not breathing normally, rescue breaths, 2 emojis depicting chest compression, and 3 indicating the correct sites of defibrillation paddle application along with the presence of an automated external defibrillator and a semiautomatic defibrillator. The addition of these to the Emoji Unicode List would allow the emoji to be used across operating systems and among both electronic and print resources. The easy visualization and cognitive understanding of these symbols have the potential to advance the representation of written and graphical (images and video) information [31].
As the world continues to progress through a pandemic, forcing many people to turn to virtual formats and telemedicine as safer choices, more advancements in these communication methods must be implemented and used. There is potential for providers and patients to communicate through emoji-enhanced messages, and in dermatology, emojis can complement messaging about lesions, colors, and symptoms, allowing ancillary information to be sent along with chief concerns. However, although the flexibility and ease of emojis may account for a large part of their appeal [5], emoji use in health care communication may also trigger potential medicolegal implications because of their inherent ambiguity of meaning.
Objective: Our objectives were to understand (1) the most commonly used terms and phrases relating to breast cancer screening, (2) the most commonly shared website links that other women interacted with, and (3) the most commonly shared website links, by age groups.
Methods: We used a novel proprietary tool from Facebook to analyze all of the more than 1.7 million unique interactions (comments on stories, reshares, and emoji reactions) and stories associated with breast cancer screening keywords that were generated by more than 1.1 million unique female Facebook users over the 1 month between November 15 and December 15, 2016. We report frequency distributions of the most popular shared Web content by age group and keywords.
Results: On average, each of 59,000 unique stories during the month was reshared 1.5 times, commented on nearly 8 times, and reacted to more than 20 times by other users. Posted stories were most often authored by women aged 45-54 years. Users shared, reshared, commented on, and reacted to website links predominantly to e-commerce sites (12,200/1.7 million, 36% of all the most popular links), celebrity news (n=8800, 26%), and major advocacy organizations (n=4900, 15%; almost all accounted for by the American Cancer Society breast cancer site).
Conclusions: On Facebook, women shared and reacted to links to commercial and informative websites regarding breast cancer and screening. This information could inform patient outreach regarding breast cancer screening, indirectly through better understanding of key issues, and directly through understanding avenues for paid messaging to women authoring and reacting to content in this space.
The reminder ribbon emoji shows a yellow ribbon, with the ends crossing each other to meet in the middle. On most platforms, the ribbon is yellow. However, some platforms such as Facebook and Windows display a pink ribbon. This emoji is often used to show support to a cause or social group. For instance, the pink ribbon is often associated with showing support for breast cancer patients and victims. Thus, sending this emoji to someone is a sign that the sender supports this cause. It can also be done when the supporter also wishes to bring attention and awareness to their chosen cause. Because of this connotation, this emoji is not often used in its literal sense, so it is not advised that people send this if they wish to refer to a ribbon or the colors yellow or pink.
Since emoji were first created in the 1990s, their use has evolved and increased significantly in text messaging, social media, email and more. And now, even clinicians are using them when communicating with each other at work.
Halverson, along with Mike Weiner, MD, MPH, Claire Donnelly, MA, and senior author Joy L. Lee, PhD, MS, recently published a study in JAMA Network Open about emoji use among hospitalists using the Diagnotes messaging app at Indiana University Health. The researchers looked through thousands of lines of messages to find anything with an emoji, then analyzed the emoji use to determine what roles they played in the messages.
A linguistic anthropologist, Halverson has a background in linguistics and ethics. Some of his past research work includes studying emoji and skin-tone modifiers as well as the different meanings different people associate with emoji. Halverson said while many studies about emoji exist, they are mostly focused on informatic approaches to analysis. And until now, emoji use among clinicians has never been studied empirically.
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