Health Care Social Media Essay

Social media, including microblogs (e.g. Twitter), social networking sites (e.g. Facebook, Patients like Me), and media sharing sites (e.g. YouTube) are influential in our everyday life. Today’s, social media is considered a cultural phenomenon in all over the world (1). Studies revealed the majority of the U.S. adult internet users (75%) use social media (2); meanwhile, this figure is about 80 per-cent among young people in European Union coun¬tries (3). Healthcare provision has been af-fected by social media, so that different platforms for social media have been applied in various do-mains such as medical education, patient educa-tion, facilitating interaction between customers and healthcare providers, collaboration among healthcare teams, provision of consultative and curative/therapeutic forums, knowledge sharing and health campaigns (4). Furthermore, social me¬dia enable healthcare providers and policy makers to communicate any health issues with public and to answer health questions. Social media facilitate patient-patient dialogue to gain perceptions and experiences from each other. Additionally, more objectives, including health education, health promo¬tion and stigma reduction are achievable (5). In this regard, many healthcare organizations have developed such media to communicate with the pub¬lic.

Aforementioned guidelines have common characteristics in concepts like determina¬tion of social media activities, ownership, informed consents and authorization, respect of individual and organizational confidentiality, compli¬ance with privacy laws, respect of copyright laws, separation of personal and professional activi¬ties, disclosure of disavowal of responsibility and conflict of interest, laws and policies related to medical records, coverage of malpractice insur-ance and terms of use