Monday, November 23, 2009

How has Twitter improved your health?


Whether we treat patients as health care professionals or not, we are all patients. How has Twitter improved your health? If you don't use Twitter, then the answer to this question is quite simple.

For me, Twitter has helped me stay current on some of the latest health issues that impact my family. For instance, when someone in my family had H1N1, I was referencing FDA and CDC recommendations that I read because of Twitter. When the FDA had recalls, I was notified through Twitter and I passed that information along through my Twitter account (@DrJosephKim)

When I needed some help finding a doctor for a relative living in a different city, I used Twitter to get some recommendations from doctors in the area. Yes, some doctors are engaging social media and using tools like Twitter to exchange information and to grow their social networks. You'll find many academic physicians on Twitter. As the Web 2.0 revolution impacts the world of health care, the use of tools like Twitter will only expand. More patients and health care professionals will be using Twitter to exchange health information. The majority of the time, Twitter will be used as a broadcast medium tool and not for personal micro-blogging. I'm eager to see how the use of Twitter in the health care community evolves in 2010.

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