Social Media in Clinical Practice

discussed since Health 2.0 appeared in the mid-2000s [1], and it has received ongoing attention ever since. Social media are weband mobile-based digital communication tools used for interactive dialogues, forming communities, and supporting user-generated content [2]. In an article on the effects of social media on the healthcare field, Honigman [3] reported statistics and figures to describe the findings of the impact of social media on healthcare. The article reported that YouTube traffic to hospital sites has increased 119% year-over-year; this includes people communicating information with friends, family, or colleagues about the hospital and sharing videos. Thirty percent of patients who watched a video made an appointment with that hospital [4]. Although the report was based on the United States alone, this example clearly shows that social media play a role in the provision of health information and are increasingly being used as a marketing tool for the healthcare industry. A review article examining the benefits and challenges regarding patients’ use of social media tools reported an increased use of social media by patients in healthcare with benefits and promises; at the same time, it also described some limitations regarding social media’s effectiveness [5]. Additionally, the availability of people’s experiences and reviews of the care they have received on blogs, social networks, and microblogs, enables the novel possibility of analyzing these reviews via techniques such as natural language processing and sentiment analysis to detect quality of care [6]. Several articles have been published in Healthcare Informatics Research (HIR) regarding the development and use of mobile health applications for a variety of conditions, such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, and obesity [7-10]. Social Media in Clinical Practice