09JulySF

Sparking ehealth innovations

> Home Page > TICr NEWSLETTER > 09JulyTOC > 09JulySF

Tweeting and Healthcare?

By Nelson Shen

Twitter was a hot topic in June when it made headlines as side stories to two news events that dominated the airwaves: the Iranian election, and the death of Michael Jackson. These two events demonstrated that Tweeting has become a social networking application that has reached a critical mass of users.

For example, Twitter arose as the conduit for discussion during the Iranian Presidential election when the Iranian governement jammed information exchange through cell phones, text messaging, and social networking sites such as Facebook. Similarly, when news broke that Michael Jackson went into a coma and passed away, Twitter posts containing the words "Michael Jackson" peaked at 125,000 tweets per hour. This, combined with a wave of internet searches for Michael Jackson related information, overloaded the internet and caused a meltdown.

In a healthcare context, Twitter has also been in recent news. During the H1N1 "Swine Flu" scare, Twitter was a medium where people could get informed (or in some cases misinformed) the outbreak of the disease. Furthermore, some doctors in the US have been experiementing with Twitter to figure out other ways it can be utilized in thier practice. The American Medical Association recently featured an article on this phenomenon and can read more about how twitter is being used in those communities at www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2009/06/29/bisa0629.htm.

TEKTIC's Top 5 Health Related Twitter Tools...

1. KICKBEE is an application developed by an NYU student to keep track of the kicking patterns of his yet to be born baby. Although this is not available to the general public, the concept of a belt that tweets in response to a kicking fetus seems somewhat marketable.
http://portfolio.menscher.com/itp/kickbee/

2. QWITTER is a social diary for smokers to tweet and keep track of their habit. It also keeps them accountable as their tweets are broadcasted to their social support network.
http://qwitter.tobaccofreeflorida.com/

3. SugarStats is a online blood sugar tracking tool that help diabetics keep statistics on thier blood sugar, medication, and activity levels.
http://www.sugarstats.com

4. Tweetwhatyoueat is a food diary that allows users to keep track of what they eat. Users can fill in the caloric values for the foods they know or let CrowdCal fill it in for them.
http://tweetwhatyoueat.com

5. RememberTheMilk (RTM) is a Twitter tool that will send its users a tweet to remind them to buy the milk and other tasks. This service can be used to remind them about taking medications or appointments.
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/twitter/