Trends in the Use of Sm in Health Care

INTRODUCTION Over a billion people are now users of Facebook1, the most popular social networking site today [2]. This astonishing statistic highlights growth and increasing importance of social media (SM), a term that embraces websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. Unsurprisingly, SM has become a staple of daily life for many patients, carers, and health care professionals, for instance, offering access to a vast range of information, support, advice, and opinion, as well as, enabling rapid communication and dissemination. Therefore, there is a need for the pharmaceutical industry and its collaborators to understand the potential of this unique resource to support, challenge, and advance or undermine their aims and activities. With such issues in mind, we reviewed the published literature to explore how far the healthcare community has embraced opportunities presented by SM, and evidence on whether or not SM has helped individuals or patient communities.