By Kent Bottles
Although some physicians and hospital leaders utilize social media platforms, many healthcare executives still express considerable skepticism. As a physician who uses various social media services to keep up on industry trends, I'm continually impressed by how innovative healthcare leaders and consumers use these tools in new and imaginative ways.
In late April 2014, Twitter announced it will allow researchers to data mine its archives of hundreds of million tweets to try to discover actionable correlations that can be of clinical utility.
According to the Health Informatics Forum, the following projects are now being conducted:
- Boston Children's Hospital will explore how tweets can be used for foodborne gastrointestinal diseases
- The University of Twente in the Netherlands will study early detection of cancer
- A joint study by the University of California, San Diego and the City University of New York will try to establish the overall happiness of Americans in selected cities
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