Twitter changes how people search for health answers and how the healthcare industry collects data – information is exchanged in real time.
But, what can you really learn in 140 characters? Plenty, according to a recent study by two researchers from Johns Hopkins University.
“Our goal was to find out whether Twitter posts could be a useful source of public health information,” says researcher Mark Dredze.
Dredze, a researcher in the university’s Human Language Technology Center, found he could evaluate health trends by analyzing tweets.
@TweetMedicine
After collecting 2 billion tweets, Dredze and study co-author Michael Paul used a software algorithm to filter out messages with health references.
They were left with 1.5 million tweets referring to health concerns that they then divided into electronic “piles” by category.
What they uncovered were allergy, flu, insomnia, cancer, obesity, depression, pain and several other ailment patterns.
“In some cases, we probably learned some things that even the tweeters’ doctors were not aware of,” says Dredze.
“Like which over-the-counter medicines the posters were using to treat their symptoms at home.”
Tweets like, “Had to pop a Benadryl … allergies are the worst,” helped the team track ailments as well as medication trends.
They also found common health misconceptions, like tweets about taking antibiotics for the flu, which could contribute to antibiotic resistance.
While the depth of the health data is limited, it can provide insight on public perceptions about illnesses, medications and other health issues.
#FluAreYou?
Twitter tracking could also uncover useful information about trending health concerns in certain regions.
Dredze and Paul were not able to see personal information from the tweets, but were able to gather geographic health data.
They found that allergy and flu season started and peaked at different times in different parts of the country, which can be helpful.
As people get more efficient at 140-character messages, Twitter could become a very useful tool for gleaning healthcare data.
But, what can you really learn in such short bursts of data? Only everything you ever wanted to know about Twitter health trend analysis.
This whole article was written tweet-style, 140 characters at a time.
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