Power of the Platform

Social media is here to stay. Sixty-four per cent of Canadians of all age groups use social media. Health topics are prevalent on Twitter and Facebook, whether through shared articles from legitimate sources or opinions expressed by friends and acquaintances. However, these health-related conversations are largely happening without the input
of medical professionals. Only 8.5 per cent of physicians say they use social media as a professional tool.

Researchers, clinicians and co-ordinators at the Cumming School of Medicine (CSM) are changing that and stepping into the digital age. Social media and new technology have made it possible to connect with patients, provide health services and conduct research in creative new ways.

The researcher

When Turin Chowdhury, PhD, began working with immigrant and refugee communities in Calgary in 2014, he struggled to keep them engaged. “I tried many different avenues to reach and engage them,” says Chowdhury. “Newcomers to Canada may be alone here, without extended family and friends, and their smartphones are what keep them connected to home. I’ve seen people cutting down on necessities in order to maintain a smartphone.” This realization led to Chowdhury’s interest in exploring social media as a health tool. “Social media was one of the ways to reach and engage immigrant and refugee communities on a regular basis.”

Since this discovery, Chowdhury has focused his research on looking at how social media can best be used in the realm of health and medicine. “It’s a complicated question,” he says. “There’s a lot of junk on the internet, and it’s as equally accessible as the good stuff. How reliable and credible is the health information that’s shared on social media?” Chowdhury has studied this by tracking what information is shared on Facebook and YouTube, as well as the comments sections on online news sites and peer support web platforms.

Chowdhury advises individuals to be safe online. “We talk about internet safety for children, but we need to think about it for the general public; only use health information from credible sources. This means you’ll need to do a bit of homework to look at the source. Anybody can make a nice website, so you need to do your due diligence.” For physicians and institutions like the CSM, Chowdhury believes that knowledge providers have a responsibility. “Individual doctors who use social media may not have much impact, but as an institution we can. We need institutional processes to make sure knowledge translation for social media is built into our research. This will also benefit the individual doctors in their outreach activities.”

“The potential for using social media in health promotion and prevention education is huge, but we must understand how best to navigate it in an impactful way,” says Chowdhury. “As generational changes occur, we need to be good knowledge translators and engagement entities. We need to play the game according to the rules of the current generation.”

The innovator

The opportunities for social networking and medicine are incredible,” says Dr. Paul McBeth (MD’07), a critical care physician and trauma surgeon and a clinical assistant  professor in the Department of Surgery. “We’re really just in the infancy stage at the moment.” McBeth has started to explore the possibilities of how social networks and new technology can improve medical care through his research program, teleTraumaDoc. Using remote ultrasound technology and video conferencing software like Skype, teleTraumaDoc has made it possible to conduct an ultrasound and have it interpreted by a trauma surgeon anywhere in the world.

“Basically, the portable ultrasound machine works with an interface built for the iPhone, which transports the images to a remote doctor for interpretation. Results can be communicated over video conferencing.” TeleTraumaDoc’s first partnership was with emergency medical physicians in Banff, who carry a portable ultrasound machine in the field. A computer in the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary is designated for interpreting ultrasounds as they come in. TeleTraumaDoc has also been used in distant locations around the world, including northern parts of Canada and remote locations in Africa. Closer to home, oil and gas companies are interested in using the technology for their field operations.

Another use for teleTraumaDoc is providing training for health care providers throughout the country. “A challenge with ultrasound is beyond using the actual machine, you need to know how to interpret the images,” says McBeth. “We can educate clinicians in rural or remote locations on how to perform and read ultrasounds using this technology.” McBeth and his partners are currently conducting research on how best to create training tools for the portable ultrasound.

“Taking advantage of new technologies, we can help rural and underserved communities in Canada and overseas,” says McBeth. “I think in the future we’ll see a transition from face-to-face medical care to virtual care. With remote sensing technology, doctors can gather data from patients at home and make recommendations without patients having to go to the hospital or clinic.”

This would also introduce new challenges. “One concern with any kind of data transfer is confidentiality,” says McBeth. “We’re working with our partners to ensure that the data coming from the portable ultrasounds is encrypted.”

Overall, McBeth is optimistic about the future of social media and medicine. “Particularly as a trauma doctor, I believe social media plays an important role in disseminating information to the general public. The ability to reach anyone, anywhere, is amazing.”

The co-ordinator

Recruiting participants for research studies is hard work. “Especially for studies looking at older populations, who can be hard to reach,” says Gabrielle Heine, a research specialist in the Clinical and Translational Exercise Physiology (CTEP) Laboratory. “Social media helps us cast a wider net when we’re looking for participants.”

Heine uses social media to promote the Brain in Motion II study, which looks at how exercise works to protect against dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. “We’re looking to recruit people who are 50 to 80 years old. Twitter has actually been helpful. Younger people who see our tweets can then talk to their parents and grandparents about the study.”

Features like sponsored posts on Facebook can also be a benefit for study recruitment. With the ability to target specific regions, age groups and interests, the chance of study information reaching the appropriate people increases. While Heine doesn’t currently run a Facebook account for the Brain in Motion II study, she’s interested in starting one. “The ability to target our ideal participants would be amazing and would hopefully help us boost our numbers.”

For Heine, the benefits of using social media to share information on the study goes beyond recruitment. “We use our social media account to inform the public about the work we do at the CSM,” she says. “Having a Twitter account makes our presence known and gives more visibility to our research. It’s also a great way to send out the message that
exercise is good for the mind. We’re a source of accurate and up-to-date information on exercise and cognition.”

One possibility for the future is that social media activity could help in the establishment of research partnerships. “There’s a lot of research happening now looking at similar population groups. Social media helps us stay up-to-date with other projects,” says Heine. “It would be interesting to see if we could partner with another research group also looking at the elderly population in order to share recruitment resources and data. Social media is amazing for making connections.”

For more information on exercise, cognition and the Brain in Motion II study, follow @BRAININMOTION on Twitter.

Sources: InsightsWest (2016); National Physicians Survey (2014).