Invited presentation, Health Informatics Society of Australia Victorian Branch ANnual General Meeting, June 2014.

1. Social Media for Health
What do you need to know?
Kathleen Gray
Senior Research Fellow, Health and Biomedical Informatics Centre,
The University of Melbourne
HISA VIC AGM, 18 June 2014

2. What is it?
Health science meets social science

3. Who’s doing it?
…who isn’t ?
• Consumers sharing their own health information on social media
– 47% with doctors
– 43% with hospitals
– 38% with a health insurance company
– 32% with a drug company
– 30% with peers
• 31% of health care professionals using social media for professional
networking
• 26% of hospitals participating in social media
[2013 US data summary]

4. What’s it good for?
Big health
• More available, shared &
tailored information
• Increased interactions
• New levels of support
• Wider access & accessibility
• Broader faster surveillance

5. Does it work, and how well?
It depends.
• Does it draw on biopsychosocial models of health?
• Is it scalable, sustainable, safe and secure?
• Can it operate across multiple devices & systems?
• Is it driven by an active community of participants?
• Does it use metrics / analytics that measure what matters?

6. What do we know?
Our expert presenters:
Mr Mark Merolli, PhD researcher
Health and Biomedical Informatics Centre
Dr Greg Wadley, Research Fellow
& Dr Wally Smith, Senior Lecturer
Dept of Computing & Information Systems
Ms Kayla Heffernan, Masters student
Dept of Computing & Information Systems
Dr Marie Bismark, Senior Research Fellow
& Ms Jen Morris, Research Assistant
School of Global & Population Health
Your questions and comments…
What do YOU need to know
about social media
for health?
More
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Health-
and-Biomedical-Informatics-Centre-at-
Uom/137319303029509?sk=timeline

7. Sources
• OMG image credit: http://insuremekevin.com/2012/11/14/healthcares-use-of-social-media-in-
sacramento-smcsac/
• Pharma image credit:
• http://worldofdtcmarketing.com/patients-use-of-social-media-for-health/focus-on-patients/
• Grajales III, Francisco Jose, Samuel Sheps, Kendall Ho, Helen Novak-Lauscher, and Gunther
Eysenbach. "Social media: a review and tutorial of applications in medicine and health care."
Journal of medical Internet research 16, no. 2 (2014): e13.
• Honigman, B. 24 Outstanding Statistics & Figures on How Social Media has Impacted the Health
Care Industry . URL: http://getreferralmd.com/2013/09/healthcare-social-media-statistics/
• Moorhead, S. Anne, Diane E. Hazlett, Laura Harrison, Jennifer K. Carroll, Anthea Irwin, and Ciska
Hoving. "A new dimension of health care: systematic review of the uses, benefits, and limitations of
social media for health communication."Journal of medical Internet research 15, no. 4 (2013).
• PWC Health Research Institute. Social media “likes” healthcare. URL:
http://download.pwc.com/ie/pubs/2012_social_media_likes_healthcare.pdf
• Young, Sean D., Ian W. Holloway, and Dallas Swendeman. "Incorporating guidelines for use of
mobile technologies in health research and practice." International health (2014): ihu019.