Social media in cancer care

Abstract

To examine the current data supporting use of social media in breast cancer clinical care. Although opportunities to utilize social media to increase knowledge have been commonly seized, the opportunity to improve communication among clinicians is lagging. Locally advanced breast cancer (LABC) requires timely coordination of care among many specialists, and presents an excellent scenario for enhanced utilization of current IT strategies. A systematic review was conducted to assess the use of social media to enhance breast cancer care. In addition, a Web-based search using common search engines and publicly available social media was conducted to determine the prevalence of information and networking pages aimed at patients and clinicians. Over 400 articles were retrieved; 81% focused on delivery of information or online support to patients, 17% focused on delivery of information to physicians, and 1% focused on the use of social media to improve collaboration among clinicians. Web searches retrieved millions of hits, with very few hits relating to improving collaboration among clinicians. Although there is significant potential to utilize current technologies to improve care for patients and improve connectedness among clinicians, most of the currently available technologies focus solely on the delivery of information.