According to a report from the Pew Internet Project, 80 percent of U.S. Internet consumers seek health information online, making it the third most popular activity after email and search engines.
We have all seen the massive adoption of social media in patient education. The next step for health care marketing is to understand what patients are sharing online and how they are sharing it.
A survey by Minneapolis marketing research firm Russell Herder "Seeking Social Solace: How Patients Use Social Media To Disclose Medical Diagnoses Online" gives us some answers.
In the survey, 40 percent of the medical conditions that were disclosed by patients online in 2010 were cancer-related, 16 percent were diabetes and 5 percent were related to sexually transmitted diseases.
Unsurprisingly, breast cancer patients had the same number of online self-disclosures as prostate cancer, colon cancer, leukemia, bone cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, lung cancer, skin cancer, pancreatic cancer, testicular cancer, and brain cancer all combined.
But where do patients share their personal health stories?
The research found that blogs were the most popular platform to self-disclose diagnoses with 51 percent of patients using them to share their stories. This was followed by online message boards at 30 percent, with Facebook and Twitter at 7 percent.
What can hospital marketers do to facilitate?
The Internet has changed how patients get access to health care information. Social media is changing how they seek comfort from each other during these times.
As health care marketers, we must guarantee that we offer our patients access to online forums so they can continue to heal after they leave our hospitals.
