Social Media in Clinical Practice

The number of patients using social media and the number of applications and solutions used by medical professionals online have been sky-rocketing in the past few years, therefore the rational behind creating a well-designed, clear and tight handbook of practical examples and case studies with simple pieces of suggestions about different social media platforms is evident. While the number of e-patients is rising, the number of web-savvy doctors who can meet the expectations of these new generations of patients is not, this huge gap can only be closed by providing medical professionals with easily implementable, useful and primarily practical pieces of advice and suggestions about how they should use these tools or at least what they should know about these, so then when an e-patient has an internet-related question, they will know how to respond properly.   As all medical professionals regardless of their medical specialties will meet e-patients, this issue with growing importance will affect every medical professionals which means there is a huge need for such a easily understandable handbook.​

Author Biography

Bertalan Mesko,MD graduated from the University of Debrecen, Medical School and Health Science Center in 2009 and started PhD in the field of personalized genomics. In 2006, Bertalan Mesko (Berci) started Scienceroll, a blog about genetics and popular medicine. It quickly evolved into a leading source of information following the impact of Web 2.0 on medical education and healthcare. He posts regularly on Twitter (@Berci) about health 2.0, medicine 2.0 and personalized medicine (top five words: rt, ff, medicine, medical, health), and maintains two “microcarnivals” He is the founder of Webicina.com, a free service curating medical social media resources in 17 languages. He thinks medical education and communication between physicians and patients will be revolutionized with the tools and services of web 2.0.