| Summary: | Social media are dynamic tools that have allowed virtual socialization and dialogue to emerge on the Internet. Although the term is often used synonymously with social networking and web 2.0, social media have penetrated intra-personal and professional communication extensively and their use has become essentially tacit knowledge among teenagers, and increasingly in the general population. To date, the value of social media to health professionals as a tool for clinical activity and in public health has not been extensively studied.
Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, Mashups and Second Life are no longer obscure words in the vocabularies of highly technical people. These spaces are starting to replace face-to-face interaction in a large majority of populations and institutions.
Healthcare has not been isolated from this trend. The evidence base for the use of social media is rising exponentially, with applications in medical education, collaboration, surveillance, clinical trials, public health, and health services research. However, the comprehensive documentation of how, where and why these tools are affecting health(care) is not well documented.
This thesis provides a comprehensive review of the impact of social media in medicine and health(care). Chapter 1 provides an overview of the conceptual and theoretical frameworks, along with the assumptions, that guide the use of social media in the health domain. Chapter 2 synthesizes the what, where, when, how and why social media are being adopted, structured according to the different functionalities of social media. These include blogs, microblogs, social networking, professional and thematic networking, wikis, media sharing tools, mashups, collaborative filtering/bookmarking and other social media (e.g., Second Life). Chapter 2 also discusses a series of clinical implications and recommendations for stakeholders wishing to engage these dynamic spaces. Chapter 3 reviews three recent administrative and judicial cases that have emerged from the inappropriate use of social media and Chapter 4 concludes with the main implications of and significance of the findings. Further research is clearly required to solidify the evidence on the use of social media in health care and to explore and document its economic, clinical, governance and tactical impact and utility.
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