Social Media and Healthcare Evaluation

The use of social media by e-patients as recorded on Twitter serves both as a means to track the growth and activity of the patient communities and, more importantly, to provide a way for patients to interact. What originally began as a way for patients to connect for emotional support and to expand their ability to manage their condition has expanded to a larger shared community interaction of patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers.

La Guía práctica para el uso de redes sociales en organizaciones sanitarias recoge conocimiento, herramientas y ejemplos para ayudar a asociaciones de pacientes, hospitales y otras organizaciones relacionadas con la salud a gestionar su comunicación usando redes sociales. El proyecto es una iniciativa de TICBioMed, asociación sin ánimo de lucro que impulsa el uso de soluciones informáticas para la salud. La Fundación AstraZeneca colabora con la iniciativa que está co-financiada por el Ministerio de Industria, Energía y Turismo a través de los fondos FEDER.

These community interactions are made possible by use of the simple # symbol (known as a hashtag) that is used to indicate a topic, conversation, or event on Twitter. This allows connections to be formed, for example, in disease-oriented communities such as the rheumatoid disease group that Kelly Young organized around the hashtag #rheum.

These hashtag signposts allow users to create specific “conversation communities” for a concentrated hour-long “Twitterchat” that can develop into an on-going discussion about the topic. A collection of healthcare-related hashtags can be found at the “The Healthcare Hashtag Project” and with a great deal of work plus some computer magic by Audun Utengen, the co-founder of Symplur, data from community archives was tracked to visually show their development.[3]

The initial analysis of this immense collection of data shows the rise of patient communities on Twitter over a 22-month period starting on September 2010.[4] The indication of this shift is visualized by green dots representing patient-oriented conversations where the size of the dots expands with the volume of the conversation. In Utengen’s video illustration, all activity increases over this time; the participation shifts from the more professional/provider-oriented conversations at the beginning of the movie (represented by pink dots) to a greater concentration of green, patient-focused discussions.

Background: For the last decade, mHealth has constantly expanded as a part of eHealth. Mobile applications for health have the potential to target heterogeneous audiences and address specific needs in different situations, with diverse outcomes, and to complement highly developed health care technologies. The market is rapidly evolving, making countless new mobile technologies potentially available to the health care system; however, systematic research on the impact of these technologies on health outcomes remains scarce.
Objective: To provide a comprehensive view of the field of mHealth research to date and to understand whether and how the new generation of smartphones has triggered research, since their introduction 5 years ago. Specifically, we focused on studies aiming to evaluate the impact of mobile phones on health, and we sought to identify the main areas of health care delivery where mobile technologies can have an impact.
Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted on the impact of mobile phones and smartphones in health care. Abstracts and articles were categorized using typologies that were partly adapted from existing literature and partly created inductively from publications included in the review.
Results: The final sample consisted of 117 articles published between 2002 and 2012. The majority of them were published in the second half of our observation period, with a clear upsurge between 2007 and 2008, when the number of articles almost doubled. The articles were published in 77 different journals, mostly from the field of medicine or technology and medicine. Although the range of health conditions addressed was very wide, a clear focus on chronic conditions was noted. The research methodology of these studies was mostly clinical trials and pilot studies, but new designs were introduced in the second half of our observation period. The size of the samples drawn to test mobile health applications also increased over time. The majority of the studies tested basic mobile phone features (eg, text messaging), while only a few assessed the impact of smartphone apps. Regarding the investigated outcomes, we observed a shift from assessment of the technology itself to assessment of its impact. The outcome measures used in the studies were mostly clinical, including both self-reported and objective measures.
Conclusions: Research interest in mHealth is growing, together with an increasing complexity in research designs and aim specifications, as well as a diversification of the impact areas. However, new opportunities offered by new mobile technologies do not seem to have been explored thus far. Mapping the evolution of the field allows a better understanding of its strengths and weaknesses and can inform future developments.

This article documents the emergence of social media, and specifically social network sites (SNS) and their impact on health information–seeking and health-related behaviors. We review surveys of user behavior on SNS to document how health information is being transformed into a social health experience rather than an individual or clinical endeavor. We then turn to the research evidence for how SNS may influence health behaviors. Although there is a substantial literature that provides support for the role of social variables in the genesis and management of health and disease, there is little scientific grounding for how to leverage these variables to improve health in either online or offline milieus. We conclude with recommendations for practice to optimize the use of social media and its contribution to improved health outcomes, and pose a series of questions that may guide the development of a research agenda in this area.

The technological innovations of blogs, podcasts, interactive media, and SNS have enabled many people to create, post, and share their own messages and content by using a variety of digital social communication tools and platforms. People and organizations can now quickly create and deliver content through more interactive Web sites and online communities where, for example, people with medical conditions can seek, give, and receive advice from other patients and healthcare providers.1,2 New communication technologies and the emergence of what has been dubbed Web 2.0 are providing the opportunity for health professionals and patients alike to engage with 1 another, their peers, friends, and families in ways unimaginable just a few years ago. The speed and scale of adoption of social media is changing the way we think about and communicate with people formerly known as audiences and the way doctors and patients interact,2,3 bringing about a new social health experience. Yet, these social media and interactive elements have been poorly integrated into many health-related Web sites, for example, those dedicated to tobacco control.4