Professional societies should address conflicts of interest with social media

Existing professional medical guidelines mistakenly fail to address the disclosure of conflicts of interest on social media, according to commentary published online Nov. 6 by the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM).

“Current guidelines fail to address adequately the risk conflicts of interest present for physician use of social media," wrote Matthew DeCamp, MD, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "This failure is surprising, given the potential for conflicts to arise within social media; difficulties with accomplishing adequate disclosure online; and the recent trend toward management, not just disclosure, of potential conflicts of interest.”

Consider an internist seeking advice on an additional antihypertensive agent for a particular patient. Immediate access to recommendations via social media are convenient, but recommendations could come from individuals with potential undisclosed conflicts, such as financial ties with a pharmaceutical company.

While existing social media guidelines, such as those issued by the American Medical Association and Federation of State Medical Boards, may refer to longstanding conflict of interest guidelines or recommend disclosure on social media platforms, this is inadequate, according to DeCamp. Social media content is easily spread and abridged, which means disclosure can be out of an individual’s control, and character limits on social media content often make disclosure infeasible.

Based on these challenges, DeCamp made five recommendations:

• Be aware of potentially undisclosed conflicts of interest;
• Disclose potential conflicts on social media;
• Explore the development of disclosure mechanisms, such as electronic tags, compatible with social media mediums;
• Explore the development of strategies to help providers manage conflicts in social media; and
• Continue ongoing research to determine the best practices for disclosing interests on social media.

“As physicians and patients increasingly interact via social media, the failure to disclose and manage conflicts of interest threatens both patient care and trust in the profession,” DeCamp concluded. “Use patterns continue to emerge, and technology changes rapidly. Nonetheless, recent highly-publicized and damaging cases of undisclosed conflicts in medicine argue for a proactive approach by physicians to disclose, manage and eliminate when necessary, all potential conflicts on social media.”