Doctors are increasingly using social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, and Sermo.
A recent study showed that 60 percent of doctors use, or are about to use, various Web 2.0 applications. That’s no surprise.
The unexpected finding was that physicians who reported they used social media prescribed 24 more medications each week when compared to their peers who reported that they did not.
So that begs the question, does social media cause doctors to write more prescriptions?
The answer is unknown, as this was hardly a rigorous scientific study. Social media expert Jonathan Richman doubts it, and says that demographics can explain the result.
“The likely real answer is that doctors who use social networks have bigger practices and thus write more prescriptions,” opines Mr. Richman. “Social networking didn’t cause this, but rather is just another demographic point. It could be that older doctors, who practices are also smaller, don’t use social networking and this accounts for the difference.”
But this result may pique the curiosity of the pharmaceutical industry, who may make more aggressive overtures to have more of a visible presence on physician-only social networking sites like Sermo and Medscape’s Physician Connect.
Related posts:
- Why doctors and nurses should engage in social media
- Hospitals are using social media, like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, for advertising to patients
- Doctors have a duty to engage in social media
- Do doctors who use physician-only social networking sites expose themselves to malpractice risk?
- Talking health care reform and social media in medicine
- How should the FDA regulate the social media advertising of drugs?
- Medical studies in the media
{ 1 comment }
I agree with Richman, I don’t think the use of social media has anything to do with the amount of medications doctors prescribe. If anything, the use of social media is a sign of of open-mindedness and new-age ideas. Newer, younger doctors that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing seem not to want to medicate every problem, or to be more interested in helping their patients find more natural alternatives that achieve similar results.
It could be argued, however, that social media has produced a generation of professionals and consumers who value “instant gratification” more so than generations before us. Medication is one of those things that speaks to instant gratification, trying to use science and medicine to heal and cure “faster” some things that could still heal on their own, just at a slower pace. This is the only argument I could see that would somewhat support the theory of social media encouraging more prescriptions.
If nothing else, it’s definitely an emerging niche market for pharmaceutical companies just like you said!
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