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Social network analysis in health and medicine

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This week in our social media course we were introduced to the concepts of social network analysis (SNA), a technique used to visualise the ties that are formed between people (i.e. social connections).  The technique has been used in a range of disciplines. Dr Caroline Haythornthwaite presented to our group on her work in the field, based primarily on the relationships that are formed between distance learners.

Here is a cool example of SNA being used to track Obama’s online web connections over time:

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How could we use it in health and medicine?

SNA was a completely new approach to me, but I could instantly see how applicable it could be in social media. A lot of people and organisations are starting to use social media in health and medicine, but many of them are asking the questions: ‘how can I understand how it is helping me?’, ‘what return will I get on this investment?’.

We discussed some of the ideas with respect to health and medicine, suggesting how online communities could be mapped to identify connections, and how this could be used in practice. For example, within an online community it might be useful to see who is a legitimate peripheral participator (aka lurker, who may eventually turn into a more active community member), and who are the ‘influencers’ in the group. If we were promoting an online campaign to increase cancer screening, we could try and target those individuals with the most ‘strong connections’ in our network, in the hope that they would endorse our campaign, and spread the message to the most people in the smallest amount of time. As the stronger connections are perceived to involve a level of trust/belief, it is likely that those who are connected to these influencers are more likely to believe in, and potentially adopt, their suggestions.

Other suggestions for the use of SNA is to see the relationships between different ‘types’ of people within a social network.  In traditional healthcare, the doctor is the expert, and the patient defers to them as a knowledgeable power, but it is increasingly being seen in the social media world that ‘e-patients’ often know as much about their disease as their doctors do. Perhaps an SNA will show that there are more strong ties being formed between professionals and patients in the online world than there are in the physical world? This could be useful as patient-centred healthcare evolves.  On you tube there are other examples of how this technique is being used elsewhere. Go explore!

Let’s get physical

Interestingly, it seems that the number of social media connections we have could actually have a physical association.  A recent report suggests that the size of our online social networks is correlated with the size of a specific part of our brain, and that this is distinct from other brain areas that are associated with offline social networks.  The meaning of this finding is yet to be explored, but who knows what it could mean for the development of future social media technologies? It will be exciting to find out!

What next?

It is clear that social media is a new and developing area. As such, there is an incredible amount of research ideas in this area, across a range of disciplines: sociology, neuroscience, psychology, …etc. It will be fascinating to watch as people uncover more new and exciting ideas, particularly as social media develops with more and more sophisticated tools!

 

 

 

Promoting health a new way

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This week I’ve been reading about mass media approaches to health education and promotion.

Traditional approaches such as TV and radio are usually successful in their reach, but often struggle in their impact due to the lack of engagement of the receivers of the message. Social media has the potential to offer numerous similar benefits to the traditional approaches (cheap, easy, accessible, on trend), while removing some of the constraints of a unidirectional approach, providing users with an opportunity for increased interactivity, and an opportunity for them to clarify questions and understand the message.

Videos such as this one from the David Cornfield melanoma fund have been shared widely – providing a cheap and emotive approach to health education. The video uses health professionals as well as individuals affected by the disease to add credibility to the source. This video has been watched on youtube by more than 3 million people, and shared by many more through facebook and twitter.

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Other areas where social media has been used in health education and promotion include:

Of course, there are many questions with respect to the use of social media in these areas, including ethical issues, quality concerns and equity concerns (see this great presentation from a couple of lecturers at Stanford and University of New Mexico that outlines these ideas further).

Most importantly, only time will tell what the true impact will be of these new methods in terms of behaviour change (for example, decrease in number of melanoma cases). The broad reach of the internet and mobile technologies that can be used to read the information could level the playing field, making health education more equitable, and potentially reducing gaps in health literacy worldwide. Fingers crossed, for all of our sakes that these approaches are seen to have lasting beneficial effects both for individuals and populations.

Open Medicine: A different era

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Wikis for the win

Pretty much everyone with access to the internet is well aware of the concept of wikis – websites that allow anyone with access to create, edit and update pages.  Wikipedia has become such a staple in most people’s lives that we head there whenever we want to learn the basics about the Ottoman Empire or check out the latest NHL draft. Health and medicine account for hundreds of pages within wikipedia (there is even a medicine portal), and there are numerous other wikis available in this field (Ask Dr Wiki, Ganfyd (Get a Note from Your Doctor), HLWiki and many others) available for editing by both health professionals and mere mortals alike.

Open Medicine: A new dawn

This week, however, my class was introduced to Open Medicine. Dr Anita Palepu (creator) described her passion for the site, describing how commonly research that is funded by the tax payer, and which uses regular people (patients), is frequently published in journals where only the privileged few have access. Open Medicine is fully open access, meaning that it is free from the spatial, temporal and financial constraints of many journals, meaning that anyone with access to the internet has access.  You can find out more in my classmate’s blog here.

But open access journals have existed for years, so what makes Open Medicine so special? Well, it is the world’s first ‘wikified’ journal, which aims to combine high quality peer-reviewed research with the best of wikis (editable, fast). Touted as an ‘experiment’ the journal allows anyone to edit (although anonymous editing is not allowed, and those who sign up are required to declare any conflicts of interest). There are plenty of possible benefits of such a site (as well as the obvious fears – eg. will editing retain the high quality of the original research?), but one of the ideas that particularly appeals to me is the ‘work in progress’ systematic reviews- as new evidence becomes available, people will be able to add it to the existing body of information. I love this idea that journal articles are not static, but that they could evolve with time. This could be a huge time saver for doctors (and others) who need rapid access to the full extent of current, evidence-based literature, ideally synthesized for usability.

And the future…?

The website is growing in readership, with followers around the world, although the largest audience right now is in North America. So far, Dr Palepu commented that they have been surprised by how few people have chosen to edit the articles, but I have to say I’m not too surprised. There are various issues to content with, not least the tradition element (“scientific journals contain gospel truth”), the fear element (“I don’t want to change it and look stupid if I’m wrong”) and the time element (“I’ll do it later…”). I believe that as social media becomes more inherent in professional and research society, we will likely move towards a more involved two-way authorship, but it will probably take time before people feel fully confident to adjust to this new way of thinking.  Fingers crossed!

It will be interesting to watch how this experiment unfolds – will other journals take note and provide similar editability?  Will more and more high profile researchers be willing to subject their research to the scrutiny of the populous?  It will be exciting to follow this project and see where it goes.

 

Social media saves the world!

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So, it’s another week and I decided to take a step back and think about why I started this blog…

Well, I am quite possibly slightly addicted to social media, spending hours seeing what friends and strangers are up to on facebook, watching ridiculous videos on youtube,YouTube Preview Image and learning innumerable pointless facts from twitter feeds.

I’m also passionate about health systems, believing that a quality healthcare system is a basic right that should be available to anyone in need, rather than just those with a load of cash.

One day I was killing time looking at website designs for my department and stumbled across the social media in health and medicine course at UBC. I couldn’t believe that there was a course that could combine two of my interests so well. The course promised to teach me skills in health 2.0, building wikis and working on blogs, while introducing me to a host of sites that might interest me.

So, how’s it going?

Well, I’m learning a load about a bunch of things that I’d never even heard of before (apomediation, anyone?) and being introduced to an array of sites and tools that are being used across healthcare.

I’ve been hearing about the use of social media in areas I’d never even considered.  Online gaming, which I’d filed in my brain as ‘never need to know about’, is being used in ways I’d never have suspected. Just this week it was reported that a group of online gamers have succeeded where scientists have failed for 10 years, in identifying the protein structure of an AIDS-causing (Mason-Pfizer monkey virus (M-PMV) retroviral protease) molecule using a game called Foldit. This is unbelievably groundbreaking stuff. As someone who was born the same year the term AIDS was coined, I have grown up with a hope that there might be a cure, and this finding may just lead the way. This is an fantastic demonstration of the power of social media in action!

Importantly, the course is making me look around, and realize that we’re all encountering health 2.0, all the time. Last week I got sick. I won’t go into details, but suffice to say, when I was sitting on the bathroom floor feeling like the world was going to end, I found myself googling away, taking solace from comments of others who had ‘been there, done that’. There was nothing so comforting as finding other people had survived to tell the tale.

Learning to Share

So, yes, I’m writing this blog as a course requirement, but I’m also writing it to share some of the incredible things I’ve been learning about social media in health and medicine.

As social media progresses and evolves, I think we can learn a lot about different ways to share and work with one another, unconstrained by the limitations of time and geography. As one Japanese proverb states:

None of us is as smart as all of us.