Health and Social Media: Perfect Storm of InformationFernández-Luque L, Bau T. Healthcare Informatics Research. 2015;21(2):67-73. doi:10.4258/hir.2015.21.2.67

Cite as: Fernández-Luque L, Bau T. Health and Social Media: Perfect Storm of Information. Healthcare Informatics Research. 2015;21(2):67-73. doi:10.4258/hir.2015.21.2.67. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4434065/

Introduction

• Widespread use of mobile phones has resulted in higher access to the Internet through these devices opens new possibilities in healthcare.

• Mobile health (mHealth) has widened acceptance by the public. It is estimated that there are 100,000 mHealth applications 

• Mobile broadband penetration has grown 4 Times in last 5years to reach 32% by 2014

• Mobile-cellular subscriptions (6.9 billion) = People on Earth

• 3/4th (5.4 billion) of them are in the developing world, & more than half in (3.6 billion) in the Asia-Pacific region.

International Telecommunication Union. Measuring the Information Society Report 2014. Geneva: International Telecommunication Union; 2014.Research2Guidance. Mobile health economics [Internet] Berlin: Research2Guidance; 2014. [2015 Apr 15]. Available from: http://mhealtheconomics.com.

References:

European Commission Report on mobile health.Use of the Internet to Search for Health-Related Information

59% of European

citizens used the Internet to look for health information in 2014.

Social Media: Same Networks EverywhereHealthcare organizations are slowly starting to use social media.

95% of US hospitals are on Facebook,

50% have a Twitter account.

Use of social media by hospitalsGrew from 2009 to 2011 in networks such as Facebook (from 10% to 67%), LinkedIn (from 20% to 31%), and YouTube (from 2% to 19%)

e-Patients, Prime Actors in Health 2.0

Health 2.0, eHealth, mHealth this is a developing area, and includes concept of Apomediation , Participation, Openness, and Collaboration. 

Apomediation - describes the fact that when a user accesses information on the Internet, he/she cuts out the gatekeepers (like the primary care doctor) and goes directly to the relevant source of information.

82-87%Search Engines

48%Dedicated websites (blogs and forums)

33-38%Ministry of Health

& WHO

20-26%Online Newspaper /

Magazines

16-23%Social

networks

13-17%Health Mobile

Apps

13-17%Patient Org Websites

Sources

European Commission. European citizen's digital health literacy. Brussels: European Commission; 2014.Griffis HM, Kilaru AS, Werner RM, Asch DA, Hershey JC, Hill S, et al. Use of social media across US hospitals: descriptive analysis of adoption and utilization. J Med Internet Res. 2014;16(11):e264.

References:

Study Cases in Health 2.0

Contextualized map with data of diabetics in the TuAnalyze application

Weitzman ER, Kelemen S, Mandl KD. Surveillance of an online social network to assess population-level diabetes health status and healthcare quality. Online J Public Health Inform. 2011;3(3):1–12.

1. Diabetes and Social Media

a. Expert e-Patients in diabetes

Online communities of patients are very common in diabetes.

These networks can be extremely large with dozens of thousands members and fairly complex networks. 

Many of these patients have become experts in their disease and provide a great amount of valuable information for their peers.  

Chomutare T, Arsand E, Fernandez-Luque L, Lauritzen J, Hartvigsen G. Inferring community structure in healthcare forums: an empirical study. Methods Inf Med. 2013;52(2):160–167

References:

Study Cases in Health 2.0

b. The boom of mobile applications for diabetes

Wide range of mobile applications , allow Patients to monitor their glucose level, weight, and other data; share them; and get motivated to lead a healthy life.

According to a study by Research2Guidance , there are more than 1,100 apps to manage diabetes. 

The use of wearable devices that monitor physical activity and gather vital data has also grown in recent years, Example of App to manage diabetes

Cafazzo JA, Casselman M, Hamming N, Katzman DK, Palmert MR. Design of an mHealth app for the selfmanagement of adolescent type 1 diabetes: a pilot study. J Med Internet Res. 2012;14(3):e70.

World Health Organization. WHO fact file [Internet] Geneva: World Health Organization; 2015Research2Guidance. Diabetes app market report 2014. Berlin: Research2Guidance; 2014.

References:

Study Cases in Health 2.0

2. Anorexia: the Power of Misinformation

• Serious health problem as anorexia has an army of activists that defend this disease as a lifestyle

• Pro-anorexia activists (the so-called Pro-Ana) are very visible in social networks, especially YouTube and Flickr.

• Findings suggest that clinicians need to be aware of pro-anorexia contents online and focus on new intervention methods, possibly tailored to individual characteristics.

Example of a pro-anorexia image on Flickr 

References:

Yom-Tov E, Fernandez-Luque L, Weber I, Crain SP. Proanorexia and pro-recovery photo sharing: a tale of two warring tribes. J Med Internet Res. 2012;14(6):e151.

Study Cases in Health 2.0

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There is still a strong anti-vaccination, which in recent years, has moved its campaign to social networks. 

Research has shown that anti-vaccination contents are more popular in social networks than validated vaccination contents

Studies show that there is a correlation between the sentiments expressed in social networks towards a new vaccine

The Vaccine Confidence Project was created to monitor people's trust in vaccination through social networks, given the importance that these tools have in vaccination decisions. e and the vaccination rates in a region.

3. Anti-vaccination, a Dangerous Movement on the Net

Briones R, Nan X, Madden K, Waks L. When vaccines go viral: an analysis of HPV vaccine coverage on You-Tube. Health Commun. 2012;27(5):478–485.The Vaccine Confidence Project [Internet] [place unknown]: The Vaccine Confidence Project; 2015

References:

Study Cases in Health 2.0

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4. Ebola: How Panic Spreads through Social Media

Recent Ebola outbreak in Western Africa is another good example of the power of social networks in influencing people's behaviour.

The news of the epidemic created a climate of global nervousness with rumours and misinformation quickly spreading through social networks. 

Social networks also helped spread rumours about fake treatments; some of them even making the general news.  

Mobile technologies can be a useful tool to control and contain epidemics, as some experts pointed out during the Ebola crisis. • SMS is an instantaneous, interactive, and cheap tool that can reach a great number of people

Kelion L. Ebola text-message system set to expand [Internet] London: BBC News; 2014. [2015 Apr 15]. References:

Conclusion

Use of Internet in the health domain is a major worldwide trend now.1

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Social networks have a powerful influence in health decisions

Due to lack of knowledge on the use of health social media, there is a need for complex multidisciplinary research to help us understand how to use social networks to support public health.

Data analytics will become a major aspect of future research. 

New analytics tools need to be developed to analyse those sources of data in a way that can benefit healthcare professionals and authorities.

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Cite as: Fernández-Luque L, Bau T. Health and Social Media: Perfect Storm of Information. Healthcare Informatics Research. 2015;21(2):67-73. doi:10.4258/hir.2015.21.2.67. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4434065/

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