Abstract
Objective: The aim of this study is to assess the perception of patients and pharmacists in the United Arab Emirates about social media uses in health-care delivery.
 Methods: A cross-sectional survey was distributed among patients and pharmacists residing in Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi. Their perception of social media uses in delivering health-care services was evaluated by analyzing their attitude toward the benefits and associated risks of social media.
 Results: The survey study had a total of 267 participants, including 150 patients and 117 pharmacists. Based on the results, 69.2% of the pharmacists agreed that social media, text message, or e-mail can be effectively used by them to improve patient communication. For patients, the study showed that the greatest percentage (77.3%, n=116) utilize both: Disease-related information and information on drugs. About 69.2% of pharmacists chose WhatsApp to be the most used platform, and 60.7% of patients prefer using Instagram as a health-care platform.
 Conclusion: The use of professional development tools for social networking is likely to continue to evolve. Integrating social media with the practice of pharmacy and patient care will have a positive impact on achieving optimal patient care.
Highlights
Social media are interactive internet-based networks of websites and applications that enable the sharing of user-generated content, including comments, digital photos, videos, and data
The findings of this study showed that social media use is prevalent among pharmacists who practice in Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi, with most pharmacists, surveyed reporting using social media on a daily basis
Around 80% of participating pharmacists and 94% of the general public use social media on a daily basis. This finding was in agreement with a previous cross-sectional survey study conducted at Purdue University College of Pharmacy to evaluate the usage patterns of social media, where the majority of respondents reported that they use social media on a daily basis
Summary
Social media are interactive internet-based networks of websites and applications that enable the sharing of user-generated content, including comments, digital photos, videos, and data. Each platform has distinctive characteristics that health-care providers can utilize to advance their role in public health [1,2]. Social media have been around for the best part of 40 years in the past decade; social media have grown to be used worldwide. The internet has become an ideal source to discover health information for health-care providers and patients. Pharmacists have been using the internet skillfully for years to access reliable health information resources such as government-sponsored (e.g., PubMed), organizationspecific (e.g., Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews), or commercial (e.g., Medscape, RxList) resources. An example of services provided through the internet includes “Ask-the-pharmacist” service that allows consumers to send questions about their medicine to a pharmacist through e-mail [6,7]
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