Cancer - Advances, Knowledge, Integrative & Holistic Treatments

“Digital communication tools have become increasingly important in oncology, yet little effort has been put into quantifying the type and volume of online conversions. The MDigitalLife Social Oncology Project seeks to put those discussions in context.”

The internet and social media have given rise to an astronomical increase in the amount of data and information available publicly. In the area of oncology these platforms have also brought about similar increases. In 2012 23,459 oncology papers were published. That represents an average of 64 papers published everyday.

One wonders how such volumes of information can be read and made useful. Traditional magazines and newspapers are not equipped to deal with such large volumes of information being produced on a daily basis. What I and many others are doing by reviewing and distilling this information onto various platforms, blogs and websites is helping to solve this problem. Social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others, as well as blogs have enabled information to be narrowed down and focused into special-interest groups in different ways.

The report analyzing trends in online communications about cancer has been done and made available on Slideshare, by W2OGroup - http://www.slideshare.net/WCGWorld/the-social-oncology-report-2013 . It is an interesting report and shows that communications about cancer are greatly influenced by social events and celebrity publicity.