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Social media holds the potential to completely transform the way physicians interact with colleagues and their patients. But are physicians ready and willing to enter the world of online media?

By Lucy Brake on Jan 16, 2013

Tools of social media, such as online communities, weblogs, instant messaging platforms and social networks, have been embraced by industries around the globe. But the healthcare sector has certainly lagged behind, mainly driven by concerns about quality of information, protecting patient privacy and the need for face-to-face communication.

New research is suggesting that this is most likely to alter in the near future, with some significant changes anticipated in the way in which physicians use social media professionally and this presents a whole range of new opportunities for the pharma industry.

A social media study just unveiled by Elsevier offers valuable insights into this. They have delved into the ways in which social media, patient networks and physician communities are used by physicians and predict some thought-provoking changes in attitudes towards these.

The research involved Elsevier Health Panel medical specialists and general practitioners based across Europe, and there are some key messages which have relevance across the healthcare world. They found that physicians are favouring particular social media platforms whilst avoiding others: “We learnt that physicians appreciate the value of online physician communities with 65 percent of the respondents using these tools in their daily profession, however they don’t particularly like using web-based patient communities,” observes Sanne Visser, Strategic Marketing Manager from Elsevier Health Sciences, who played a key role in the study.

The physicians interviewed did value social media as a source of current information in their particular field and identified this as one of the leading reasons for social media use: “Our study highlighted that physicians believe social media makes information easy accessible, but their expectations about the quality are really quite low,” says Visser.

Online patient communities are not particularly popular with physicians. In fact, nearly one third of those interviewed felt they would be unlikely to ever use this form of social media.

Other similar research published last year in the Journal of Medical Internet Research looked at the different factors influencing the way social media is used by physicians. Nearly 25 percent of those surveyed used social media every day to search for information and around 15 percent used it for contributing new information. Over half of the respondents believed social media is a beneficial way of engaging on medical issues and felt that it “enabled them to care for patients more effectively”.

Lead author, Brian McGowan PhD concluded that the use of social media applications are “seen as an efficient and effective method for physicians to keep up-to-date and to share newly acquired medical knowledge with other physicians within the medical community, and to improve the quality of patient care”. Of the physicians interviewed for the Elsevier study, nearly 60 percent said that information in online physician communities influenced their decisions.

A more recent study of the demographic and practice-related characteristics of physicians who use social media was published in the November 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. The authors of this report evaluated the responses to help support recommendations about the development of communication initiatives targeting physicians: “With the exception of physicians under 35 years of age having moderately higher odds of using social networking websites, technology use among physicians was uniform.”

The report concluded that physician use of some internet-based communication technologies is expanding rapidly but that the characteristics of users may change as uptake increases and technologies evolve, thus there is a need for people to stay attentive to the chosen method of communication: “Communication initiatives involving internet-based technologies have the potential to reach a broad range of physicians, and messages should be designed accordingly.”

One of the main findings from the Elsevier study is that physicians are feeling more positive about using social media tools to interact with each other. “One of the most useful take home messages to emerge from our research is that over three quarters of all physicians are likely to be involved in online physician communities in the coming five years. This has some important implications for the healthcare industry,” highlights Visser.

The American Medical Association (AMA) offers some thoughts on ways that the pharma industry can tap into the power of social media. The suggestions are based on reports by the Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s Health Research Institute and from the Computer Sciences Corporation’s (CSC) Global Institute for Emerging Healthcare Practices, which looked at ways that social media can offer a valuable business intelligence tool and as an avenue for reporting that could lead to better care and improved outcomes.

In particular, they identified that patient communities are a good place for physicians to find out more information about topics patients are interested in, and thus what is important to their clients. Interestingly, the Elsevier research found that only seven percent of physicians currently use online patient communities, but predict that this will be significantly higher within the next three years, increasing to over 50 percent.

Feedback on social media sites about pharmaceuticals and therapies is a valuable source of information. “If 10,000 people start talking about a side effect of a drug, it won’t be that hard to find that out,” Jared Rhoads, Senior Research Analyst with CSC’s Global Institute for Emerging Healthcare Practices, told the AMA.

In addition, there are many benefits to be gained from having immediate access to a global community of peers readily available to consult with. Healthcare professionals are using online physician communities as a virtual form of “doctor’s lounge”, where they can discuss challenging patient issues with physicians who may have experienced similar concerns. These forms of social media offer instant contact for physicians to consult and exchange on current medical topics.

It appears the debate about whether the medical community is ready to adopt social media as a key tool for sharing medical information and delivering high quality care to patients is, largely, over. The focus now is around the best ways to support the practical use of physician and patient communities, how to ensure the information being provided is high quality and targeting the delivery method to the right audience.