Is social media becoming more important in medical research?
Yes.
The graph above depicts the number of references found using PUBMED, the leading medical research database.
Although the total number of references/year (>450 for both Twitter and Facebook in 2017) isn’t a particularly high number, the acceleration of papers being produced is dramatic, with nearly a 10 fold increase over the past 7 years.
Other observations include the relatively flat growth of references found using LinkedIn (not surprising, given that this is principally a career domain, the slower growth rate of YouTube, and the Twitter growth beginning to surpass Facebook – the latter I suspect is from the increasing use of Twitter as a surveillance tool for infectious diseases such as influenza.
Whether this accelerated growth of social media as a research tool continues remains to be seen, but if it does continue at this rate for several more years, it will become increasingly important for the healthcare industry to see social media as more than just a marketing and branding tool.