Can Twitter prevent heart disease?

Twitter may help prevent heart disease, according to a new Australian study.

The fast and far-reaching way that information spreads through the social network has the potential to save lives by providing education about the illness, which the Heart Foundation says kills one Australian every 12 minutes.

A group of researchers from the University of Sydney reached that conclusion after studying 15 health-focused Twitter accounts with more than one million followers, nine professional organisations and six medical journals.

‘The study showed that, through its inherent networking, social media sites like Twitter have the potential to enhance education, awareness and overall management of cardiovascular disease,’ the university said in a statement.

The findings were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology on Tuesday.

‘The popularity and rise of Twitter has made it a readily available, free, and user-friendly tool to disseminate information rapidly to a diverse audience, for example, to engage health professionals and heart attack survivors,’ said lead author, Associate Professor Julie Redfern.

‘In recent years, a growing number of health professionals have been using social media to share information.

‘In a survey of 485 oncologists and physicians, 24 per cent used social media at least daily to scan or explore medical information.’

Senior author Professor Chris Semsarian pointed to recent studies which suggested Twitter also spreads key information about quitting smoking and managing epileptic seizures.

Twitter for healthcare.. 50 million tweets and counting

Health, whether our own or that of someone close to us, carries a high level of importance, interest, and ultimately common ground.  And because of that we tend to talk about it.  We seek knowledge and support.  And with the rise of healthcare social media our ability connect with those who share our desire to converse and learn from one another has opened up amazing possibilities. Enter Twitter for healthcare.

Communities connecting via Twitter for healthcare

Twitter is certainly one of the easiest social media platforms out there on which to find and connect with individuals who share our interests.  That’s because it’s largely an open platform.  One that encourages connecting with people who we otherwise may never have known.  And that holds true when you consider Twitter for healthcare.  However, healthcare has an incredibly diverse presence on Twitter because of the many specialized needs that exist … each with issues that are uniquely their own.

We launched the Healthcare Hashtag Project eighteen months ago with the intent of helping to lower the barriers to using Twitter for healthcare interests.  From the start it was intended as being a way of finding the conversations relevant to your own health interests, to discover who the thought leaders are, and above all to engage and contribute to conversations and discovery.

In that time we’ve seen advocates, providers, and patients alike flock to the project, provide us with numerous inspiring ideas, and contribute many new healthcare hashtags that have helped to facilitate the expansion of engagement and the birth of new online healthcare communities.

Twitter grants special permission to the Healthcare Hashtag Project

The Healthcare Hashtag project doesn’t rely on the standard data that’s available from Twitter.  We’ve gained “elevated” privileges to the the Twitter Stream API from them.  Thus, we’re able to track many more hashtags than we otherwise would have been able to.  So let’s not forget to give a nod and a “thank you” to Twitter for helping the healthcare community to flourish on their platform.

Why should I use Twitter for healthcare exploration and engagement?

At the Healthcare Hashtag Project  the community contributions and the expanding role of Twitter in healthcare have resulted in a captured conversation that just recently crossed the 50 million tweet threshold!  That’s 50 million individual pieces of healthcare information shared.  And it’s now at a level to where it’s growing at a rate of over 1 million healthcare related tweets per week.  Too much for you to keep track of?  No worries, we’ve got a complete, free transcript service that allows you to retrieve all of them.  Just check out one of our individual hashtag pages to get the twitter transcript for that hashtag within the date parameters you specify.

Want more evidence that Twitter is one of the leading social media platforms for healthcare?   Explore the project yourself.  And once you do, I hope that you’ll be inspired to contribute to the ever expanding healthcare conversation taking place on Twitter via the use of healthcare hashtags.  Let your voice be heard … and tune in to the many other voices who are sharing as well.

Twitter for healthcare is alive and well.

Most hospitals don’t budget, plan for social media

While a majority of hospitals (nine out of 10) have jumped on the social media bandwagon, a good portion of those facilities (two-thirds) have no formal ideas for how that media should be used, a study released in January by Greystone.Net found. Some healthcare bloggers, however, fear that the number of hospitals with a plan could be even less. 

“Greystone.Net’s percentage of engaged hospitals seems overly optimistic,” said blogger Jennifer Riggle, associate vice president at PR firm CRT/tanaka, according to Healthcare IT News. “I hazard to guess that many hospitals are simply setting up Twitter accounts, posting videos on YouTube and creating Facebook pages without thinking how they can use these tools to support their service lines and improve communications with the community they serve.” 

Riggle’s concerns may be valid ones, as the study showed that Twitter, YouTube and Facebook were the most popular forms of social media used. While 92 percent of hospitals and health systems cited a desire to bring in new patients as the reasoning behind engaging in social media, just under 13 percent had any success doing so. 

The study also found that few hospitals even do so much as budgeting financially for social media, meaning most facilities currently aren’t hiring employees to handle such tasks. In fact, 70 percent of the hospitals surveyed reported that they had no more than three people dedicated to social media. 

Embracing Social Media

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