Medical marketing & Media | Matthew Arnold
Around a third of US adults use social media as a health resource,
according to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers – whether seeking out medical
info, sharing symptoms and experiences or rating drugs, devices, doctors,
hospitals and health plans.
The consulting giant surveyed 1,060 US adults and found that 42% have viewed
health-related consumer reviews (more or less evenly split between reviews of
treatments, doctors, hospitals and health insurers) through social networks
like Twitter and Facebook. A third have read of friends' or family members'
health experiences through social media, while 29% have read of other patients'
experience with a disease they have and 24% have viewed health-related videos
and images posted by other patients.