{"id":15453,"date":"2013-10-21T08:53:03","date_gmt":"2013-10-21T12:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pmedicine.org\/epatients\/?p=15453"},"modified":"2013-10-21T08:53:03","modified_gmt":"2013-10-21T12:53:03","slug":"how-do-we-know-that-social-media-is-important-to-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/participatorymedicine.org\/epatients\/2013\/10\/how-do-we-know-that-social-media-is-important-to-health-care.html","title":{"rendered":"How do we know that social media is important to health care?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A cross-post from susannahfox.com<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

On Friday, I spoke at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine<\/a>, along with Kevin Pho, MD<\/a>. During a planning call, the symposium organizers\u00a0had shared results from a faculty survey: Fully two-thirds do not use social tools on a regular basis. Asking them, therefore, to spend a half-day<\/a> learning about social media was a pretty bold request.<\/p>\n

Inspired by\u00a0Kathy Sierra<\/a>\u00a0to focus on the users’ (that is, the audience’s) needs,\u00a0I began with a question that many busy clinicians might be asking:<\/p>\n

How do we know that social media is important to health care?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why should they take anyone’s word for it? Where is the evidence?<\/p>\n

Here’s the data I gathered, with a special focus on low-income, low-literacy, and immigrant populations since we were at a hospital serving the Bronx:<\/p>\n