Potential sources of information from social media
| Type of source | Examples | Relevant information | Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating and feedback websites | RateMDs, Yelp | Ratings and free text descriptions of healthcare providers and individual clinicians | Comments usually directly relate to care experience | Comparatively low usage, possibility of deliberate gaming |
| Patient networks and blogs | Patientslikeme, Quora, Digg | Patients' and caregivers’ shared descriptions of their care and experiences | Authentic voice of the patient, often well used in specific patient communities | Possible selection bias towards particular demographics (eg, higher socioeconomic status) or interest groups |
| Social publishing platforms and microblogs | Tweets (short messages) directed towards healthcare organisations (eg, hospitals) or healthcare providers | High volume of traffic, often tagged with service they relate to | Short, unstructured messages may contain minimal information about care quality and experiences | |
| Social networks | Comments left on healthcare organisations (eg, hospitals) or friends’ pages about care and experiences, or specific signals of appreciation (eg, likes) | High membership and usage by the public | Public rarely talks about healthcare on these platforms. Content may be from employees rather than patients | |
| Media-sharing networks | Instagram, SnapChat, YouTube | Visual depictions of patient experience (eg, pictures of hospital room amenities or cleanliness) | Additional visual dimension to describe the nuances of patient experiences | Visual media often lacks context of situation or sufficient description of supporting details |
| Bookmarking sites | Pinterest, Flipboard | Common items or themes that patients ‘tag’ as being important to them or their experience | Aggregates disparate items to curate themes unique to patient's perspective or values | Accurate curation relies on adequate access and exposure to myriad of social media items or articles |
| Collaboration tools | Wikipedia | Collective input of several patients and/or healthcare providers to describe health conditions and care paths, and answer common questions | Continuous refinement of major topics in healthcare that require both patient and provider input; highly interactive collaboration | Possible selection bias to include perspectives of only the most engaged patients, healthcare consumers or healthcare providers |
| Social news | Digg, Reddit | Patients can ‘vote’ to curate news posted by others that are most informative to the group | Integrates both a strong content element and patient feedback | Limited insight into individual patient preferences or reaction to particular content |
Source: Adapted from Greaves et al, 201314 and updated.