NEJM: In case of emergency, tweet
Engaging with and using emerging social media may place the emergency management community, including medical and public health professionals, in a better position to respond to disasters, according to a perspective published July 27 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Because social media are so pervasive in communication—more than 40 million Americans use social media websites multiple times each day—it makes sense to leverage these channels before, during and after disasters, wrote Raina M. Merchant, MD, Stacy Elmer, MA, and Nicole Lurie, MD, of the department of emergency medicine at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in the perspective.
“Integrating these networks into a community’s preparedness activities for public health emergencies could help to build social capital and community resilience, making it easier for both professional responders and ordinary citizens to use familiar social media networks and tools in a crisis,” wrote the authors.
These tools also can link the public with day-to-day, real-time information about how its community’s healthcare system is functioning. Emergency room and clinic waiting times are already available in some areas via mobile phone apps, billboard RSS feeds and hospital tweets.
Routine collection and rapid dissemination of these measures can inform decision-making among patients, healthcare providers and administrators. Monitoring systems via social channels during an actual disaster could help responders verify whether certain facilities are overloaded and determine which ones can offer needed medical care, Lurie et al wrote.
In addition, location-based service applications can improve preparedness by enhancing people’s awareness of crisis situations in their geographic area. Using global positioning system (GPS) software for mobile phones, these applications allow people to “check in” to a specific location and share information about their immediate surroundings. “With an additional click, perhaps off-duty nurses or paramedics who check in at a venue could broadcast their professional background and willingness to help in the event of a nearby emergency.”
The authors pointed out that by sharing images, texting and tweeting, the public is already becoming part of a large response network. During the first 90 minutes of the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, for example, students posted on-scene updates on Facebook. Online message boards generated by the American Red Cross have been used during recent emergencies for sharing and receiving information about suspected disaster victims.
During the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, the Department of Health and Human Services posted a video message that was viewed on YouTube or downloaded as an iTunes video podcast to inform viewers what was happening, what to expect and how to prevent the spread of influenza, Lurie and colleagues stated. At the same time, the number of people following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “emergency profile” on Twitter increased from 65,000 to 1.2 million within a year, and the agency created online applications, or widgets, that provided credible health information and could be displayed on other websites.
“Thus, social media provide opportunities for engaging citizens in public health efforts both by ‘pushing’ information to the public and by ‘pulling’ information from bystanders. Both approaches may improve management of future emergencies.”
However, there are some obstacles hindering optimal use of social media for emergency preparedness, the authors warned. The technology may have a limited ability to reach at-risk, vulnerable populations. In addition, it is not always possible to know whether social media users are who they claim to be or whether the information they share is accurate.
False messages are often rapidly corrected by other users, but it can be difficult to separate real signals of a health crisis from “background noise and opportunistic scams,” they wrote. “Careful consideration must also be given to issues of privacy and the question of who should monitor data from social media (and for what).”
Studies are needed to evaluate the reliability and validity of public health-related information communicated through social media. Metrics such as Twitter Analytics, Flikr Stats and Google Analytics are used by the business community, but few published scientific studies have applied these tools to evaluate the capabilities or effectiveness of social media in public health emergencies. “Also lacking are studies evaluating whether the integration of social media into public health efforts affects the costs, quality or outcomes of healthcare,” they wrote.
“Of course, social media cannot and should not supersede our current approaches to disaster-management communication or replace our public health infrastructure, but if leveraged strategically, they can be used to bolster current systems,” the authors concluded. “Now is the time to begin deploying these innovative technologies while developing meaningful metrics of their effectiveness and of the accuracy and usefulness of the information they provide.”
Because social media are so pervasive in communication—more than 40 million Americans use social media websites multiple times each day—it makes sense to leverage these channels before, during and after disasters, wrote Raina M. Merchant, MD, Stacy Elmer, MA, and Nicole Lurie, MD, of the department of emergency medicine at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in the perspective.
“Integrating these networks into a community’s preparedness activities for public health emergencies could help to build social capital and community resilience, making it easier for both professional responders and ordinary citizens to use familiar social media networks and tools in a crisis,” wrote the authors.
These tools also can link the public with day-to-day, real-time information about how its community’s healthcare system is functioning. Emergency room and clinic waiting times are already available in some areas via mobile phone apps, billboard RSS feeds and hospital tweets.
Routine collection and rapid dissemination of these measures can inform decision-making among patients, healthcare providers and administrators. Monitoring systems via social channels during an actual disaster could help responders verify whether certain facilities are overloaded and determine which ones can offer needed medical care, Lurie et al wrote.
In addition, location-based service applications can improve preparedness by enhancing people’s awareness of crisis situations in their geographic area. Using global positioning system (GPS) software for mobile phones, these applications allow people to “check in” to a specific location and share information about their immediate surroundings. “With an additional click, perhaps off-duty nurses or paramedics who check in at a venue could broadcast their professional background and willingness to help in the event of a nearby emergency.”
The authors pointed out that by sharing images, texting and tweeting, the public is already becoming part of a large response network. During the first 90 minutes of the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, for example, students posted on-scene updates on Facebook. Online message boards generated by the American Red Cross have been used during recent emergencies for sharing and receiving information about suspected disaster victims.
During the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, the Department of Health and Human Services posted a video message that was viewed on YouTube or downloaded as an iTunes video podcast to inform viewers what was happening, what to expect and how to prevent the spread of influenza, Lurie and colleagues stated. At the same time, the number of people following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “emergency profile” on Twitter increased from 65,000 to 1.2 million within a year, and the agency created online applications, or widgets, that provided credible health information and could be displayed on other websites.
“Thus, social media provide opportunities for engaging citizens in public health efforts both by ‘pushing’ information to the public and by ‘pulling’ information from bystanders. Both approaches may improve management of future emergencies.”
However, there are some obstacles hindering optimal use of social media for emergency preparedness, the authors warned. The technology may have a limited ability to reach at-risk, vulnerable populations. In addition, it is not always possible to know whether social media users are who they claim to be or whether the information they share is accurate.
False messages are often rapidly corrected by other users, but it can be difficult to separate real signals of a health crisis from “background noise and opportunistic scams,” they wrote. “Careful consideration must also be given to issues of privacy and the question of who should monitor data from social media (and for what).”
Studies are needed to evaluate the reliability and validity of public health-related information communicated through social media. Metrics such as Twitter Analytics, Flikr Stats and Google Analytics are used by the business community, but few published scientific studies have applied these tools to evaluate the capabilities or effectiveness of social media in public health emergencies. “Also lacking are studies evaluating whether the integration of social media into public health efforts affects the costs, quality or outcomes of healthcare,” they wrote.
“Of course, social media cannot and should not supersede our current approaches to disaster-management communication or replace our public health infrastructure, but if leveraged strategically, they can be used to bolster current systems,” the authors concluded. “Now is the time to begin deploying these innovative technologies while developing meaningful metrics of their effectiveness and of the accuracy and usefulness of the information they provide.”