In this day and age, Social media plays a big role in almost all aspects. Therefore, it is no surprise that people are taking medical advice from online public forums which include social media sites where both healthcare providers and patients are willing to discussing anything ranging from surgeries to pills.
About 28% of the social media users are discussing health issues online. Healthcare providers online include nurses, hospitals, patient advocacy organizations, retail pharmacies, drug companies, retail pharmacies, and gyms or fitness centers, fellow patients. However, social media users take the words of a doctor over anyone else.
There are more than 1500 hospitals online. Most of these hospitals have a huge presence on Facebook, only 695 on Youtube, 967 on Twitter. Not just the patients, but 88% of physicians seek assistance online in order to utilize websites and specialized apps to research medical, biotech and pharmaceutical devices.
Mayo Clinic was the first to use social media and it suddenly had 76,000 listeners subscribing to it.
Social Media is a wonderful tool to get information of all types, but online medical assistance cannot replace direct consultation with the doctor. Hence discussing health issues on social media can be viewed only as an improvement to the traditional health service.
