BackgroundPatients increasingly turn to the Internet for information on medical conditions, including clinical news and treatment options. In recent years, an online patient community has arisen alongside the rapidly expanding world of social media, or “Web 2.0.” Twitter provides real-time dissemination of news, information, personal accounts and other details via a highly interactive form of social media, and has become an important online tool for patients. This medium is now considered to play an important role in the modern social community of online, “wired” cancer patients.ResultsFifty-one highly influential “power accounts” belonging to cancer patients were extracted from a dataset of 731 Twitter accounts with cancer terminology in their profiles. In accordance with previously established methodology, “power accounts” were defined as those Twitter accounts with 500 or more followers. We extracted data on the cancer patient (female) with the most followers to study the specific relationships that existed between the user and her followers, and found that the majority of the examined tweets focused on greetings, treatment discussions, and other instances of psychological support. These findings went against our hypothesis that cancer patients’ tweets would be centered on the dissemination of medical information and similar “newsy” details.ConclusionsAt present, there exists a rapidly evolving network of cancer patients engaged in information exchange via Twitter. This network is valuable in the sharing of psychological support among the cancer community.

BackgroundTwitter is an interactive, real-time media that could prove useful in health care. Tweets from cancer patients could offer insight into the needs of cancer patients.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to understand cancer patients’ social media usage and gain insight into patient needs.MethodsA search was conducted of every publicly available user profile on Twitter in Japan for references to the following: breast cancer, leukemia, colon cancer, rectal cancer, colorectal cancer, uterine cancer, cervical cancer, stomach cancer, lung cancer, and ovarian cancer. We then used an application programming interface and a data mining method to conduct a detailed analysis of the tweets from cancer patients.ResultsTwitter user profiles included references to breast cancer (n=313), leukemia (n=158), uterine or cervical cancer (n=134), lung cancer (n=87), colon cancer (n=64), and stomach cancer (n=44). A co-occurrence network is seen for all of these cancers, and each cancer has a unique network conformation. Keywords included words about diagnosis, symptoms, and treatments for almost all cancers. Words related to social activities were extracted for breast cancer. Words related to vaccination and support from public insurance were extracted for uterine or cervical cancer.ConclusionsThis study demonstrates that cancer patients share information about their underlying disease, including diagnosis, symptoms, and treatments, via Twitter. This information could prove useful to health care providers.

Background The use of social media by hospitals has become widespread in the United States and Western European countries. However, in Japan, the extent to which hospitals and clinics use social media is unknown. Furthermore, recent revisions to the Medical Care Act may subject social media content to regulation. Objective The purpose of this study was to examine social media use in Japanese hospitals and clinics. We investigated the adoption of social media, analyzed social media content, and compared content with medical advertising guidelines. Methods We randomly sampled 300 hospitals and 300 clinics from a list of medical institutions that was compiled by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. We performed web and social media (Facebook and Twitter) searches using the hospital and clinic names to determine whether they had social media accounts. We collected Facebook posts and Twitter tweets and categorized them based on their content (eg, health promotion, participation in academic meetings and publications, public relations or news announcements, and recruitment). We compared the collected content with medical advertising guidelines. Results We found that 26.0% (78/300) of the hospitals and 7.7% (23/300) of the clinics used Facebook, Twitter, or both. Public relations or news announcements accounted for 53.99% (724/1341) of the Facebook posts by hospitals and 58.4% (122/209) of the Facebook posts by clinics. In hospitals, 16/1341 (1.19%) Facebook posts and 6/574 (1.0%) tweets and in clinics, 8/209 (3.8%) Facebook posts and 15/330 (4.5%) tweets could conflict medical advertising guidelines. Conclusions Fewer hospitals and clinics in Japan use social media as compared to other countries. Social media were mainly used for public relations. Some content disseminated by medical institutions could conflict with medical advertising guidelines. This study may serve as a reference for medical institutions to guide social media usage and may help improve medical website advertising in Japan.

BackgroundThe academic scandal on a study on stimulus‑triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cells in Japan in 2014 involved suspicions of scientific misconduct by the lead author of the study after the paper had been reviewed on a peer‑review website. This study investigated the discussions on STAP cells on Twitter and content of newspaper articles in an attempt to assess the role of social compared with traditional media in scientific peer review.ObjectiveThis study examined Twitter utilization in scientific peer review on STAP cells misconduct.MethodsSearches for tweets and newspaper articles containing the term “STAP cells” were carried out through Twitter’s search engine and Nikkei Telecom database, respectively. The search period was from January 1 to July 1, 2014. The nouns appearing in the “top tweets” and newspaper articles were extracted through a morphological analysis, and their frequency of appearance and changes over time were investigated.ResultsThe total numbers of top tweets and newspaper articles containing the term were 134,958 and 1646, respectively. Negative words concerning STAP cells began to appear on Twitter by February 9-15, 2014, or 3 weeks after Obokata presented a paper on STAP cells. The number of negative words in newspaper articles gradually increased beginning in the week of March 12-18, 2014. A total of 1000 tweets were randomly selected, and they were found to contain STAP-related opinions (43.3%, 433/1000), links to news sites and other sources (41.4%, 414/1000), false scientific or medical claims (8.9%, 89/1000), and topics unrelated to STAP (6.4%, 64/1000).ConclusionsThe discussion on scientific misconduct during the STAP cells scandal took place at an earlier stage on Twitter than in newspapers, a traditional medium.

BackgroundTwitter is a free social networking and microblogging service on the Internet. Medical professionals and patients have started to use Twitter in medicine. Twitter use by medical institutions can interactively and efficiently provide public health information and education for laypeople.ObjectiveThis study examined Twitter usage by medical institutions.MethodsWe reviewed all Japanese user accounts in which the names of medical institutions were described in the user’s Twitter profile. We then classified medical institutions’ tweets by content.ResultsWe extracted 168 accounts for medical institutions with ≥500 followers. The medical specialties of those accounts were dentistry and oral surgery (n=73), dermatology (n=12), cosmetic surgery (n=10), internal medicine (n=10), ophthalmology (n=6), obstetrics and gynecology (n=5), plastic surgery (n=2), and others (n=50). Of these, 21 accounts tweeted medical knowledge and 45 accounts tweeted guidance about medical practice and consultation hours, including advertisements. In the dentistry and oral surgery accounts, individual behavior or thinking was the most frequent (22/71, 31%) content. On the other hand, consultation including advertisements was the most frequent (14/23, 61%) in cosmetic surgery, plastic surgery, and dermatology.ConclusionsSome medical specialties used Twitter for disseminating medical knowledge or guidance including advertisements. This indicates that Twitter potentially can be used for various purposes by different medical specialties.