(Medinfo Panel) New Trends in Health Social Media: Hype or Evidence-based medicine?

Dear all,

We recently got accepted a panel proposal for MedInfo (the largest global medical informatics conference organised by IMIA). In this panel we will adress the need for more evidence in the area of health social media, as you can see in the abstract bellow:

“The use of social media in the health domain is growing continuously in the terms of use and also complexity. This panel will provide and overview of the current situation and the challenges ahead. The presenters will provide an engaging discussion rooted in the evidence of the emerging field of Health Social Media. Among other topics the following aspects will be addressed: gamification, personalized medicine, patient safety and other topics that will be discussed in the panel.”

Our panelist are an heterogenous researchers from our working group:

• Luis Fernandez-Luque, MS (Norut, Tromsø, Norway). Luis Fernandez-Luque is an eHealth expert and Secretary of the IMIA Social Media Working Group. He will organize the panel and lead the discussion about social games.
• Annie Lau, PhD (Centre for Health Informatics, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) will lead the discussion about the risks of social media for consumers.
• Carol S Bond, Dr (Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, United Kingdom). She has a background as in nursing informatics and participatory health. She is currently the Academic Head of Practice Simulation in the School of Health and Social Care at Bournemouth University. She will present the role of ePatients in evidence-based medicine.
• Kerstin Denecke, PhD (University Medical Center of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany) will introduce disease surveillance using social media. Read the blog post about her topic.
• Fernando José Martín-Sanchez, Professor (Health and Biomedical Informatics Research Unit. The University of Melbourne, Australia) will discuss the role of social media in personalized health.

In order to allow interaction with the health social media community we will post a serie of blogs entries about the different topics addressed in our panel.

What do you think? Is Social media Hype or Evidence-based Medicine?  Where do you think the research is going?  What are your thoughts?

Regards,

Luis Fernandez-Luque

IMIA Social Media – Secretary