Title: Technology solutions in chronic disease management: the role of 'Social Media'

Authors: Jean Schulz

Addresses: University of Hohenheim, D-70593 Stuttgart, Germany

Abstract: 'Social Media', such as Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia, and healthcare are melting together and becoming more and more important for our daily life and as healthcare cost is rising the internet and so called Health 2.0 can offer cost-effective opportunities to manage chronic diseases especially diabetes mellitus. This disease occurs at all ages and is one of the most chronic diseases worldwide which can be positively influenced by Social Media. Besides costs additional benefits occur for both the physicians and patients. These benefits lie amongst other things in an improved communication and information infrastructure. However, there are still hurdles that need to be considered, as most chronically ill people are elderly people who are less interested in internet technology. So these benefits only reach part of the patients. Therefore Social Media can be considered as a supplement to traditional care, which has high potential and remains to be an important future technology, particularly when considering mobile solutions.

Keywords: technology solutions; chronic diseases; disease management; diabetes; social media; health 2.0; user generated content; blogs; social networking; collaborative projects; virtual worlds; patients; health professionals; Facebook; Twitter; Wikipedia; e-healthcare; electronic healthcare.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2014.064819

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2014 Vol.15 No.4, pp.291 - 304

Received: 02 Nov 2013
Accepted: 03 Mar 2014
Published online: 21 Oct 2014 *

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