Using Social Media for Rapid Information Dissemination in a Pandemic: #PedsICU and Coronavirus Disease 2019

Characterizing Public Sentiments and Drug Interactions in the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Social Media: Natural Language Processing and Network Analysis

BACKGROUND

While the COVID-19 pandemic has induced massive discussion of available medications on social media, traditional studies focused only on limited aspects, such as public opinions, and endured reporting biases, inefficiency, and long collection times.

OBJECTIVE

Harnessing drug-related data posted on social media in real-time can offer insights into how the pandemic impacts drug use and monitor misinformation. This study aimed to develop a natural language processing (NLP) pipeline tailored for the analysis of social media discourse on COVID-19-related drugs.

METHODS

This study constructed a full pipeline for COVID-19-related drug tweet analysis, using pretrained language model-based NLP techniques as the backbone. This pipeline is architecturally composed of 4 core modules: named entity recognition and normalization to identify medical entities from relevant tweets and standardize them to uniform medication names for time trend analysis, target sentiment analysis to reveal sentiment polarities associated with the entities, topic modeling to understand underlying themes discussed by the population, and drug network analysis to dig potential adverse drug reactions (ADR) and drug-drug interactions (DDI). The pipeline was deployed to analyze tweets related to the COVID-19 pandemic and drug therapies between February 1, 2020, and April 30, 2022.

RESULTS

From a dataset comprising 169,659,956 COVID-19-related tweets from 103,682,686 users, our named entity recognition model identified 2,124,757 relevant tweets sourced from 1,800,372 unique users, and the top 5 most-discussed drugs: ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, zinc, and vitamin D. Time trend analysis revealed that the public focused mostly on repurposed drugs (ie, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin), and least on remdesivir, the only officially approved drug among the 5. Sentiment analysis of the top 5 most-discussed drugs revealed that public perception was predominantly shaped by celebrity endorsements, media hot spots, and governmental directives rather than empirical evidence of drug efficacy. Topic analysis obtained 15 general topics of overall drug-related tweets, with "clinical treatment effects of drugs" and "physical symptoms" emerging as the most frequently discussed topics. Co-occurrence matrices and complex network analysis further identified emerging patterns of DDI and ADR that could be critical for public health surveillance like better safeguarding public safety in medicines use.

CONCLUSIONS

This study shows that an NLP-based pipeline can be a robust tool for large-scale public health monitoring and can offer valuable supplementary data for traditional epidemiological studies concerning DDI and ADR. The framework presented here aspires to serve as a cornerstone for future social media-based public health analytics.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Visiting Policies: A Worldwide Survey

The purpose of this study was to evaluate pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) visiting policies around the world and how the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected these policies, due to concerns relating to a viral transmission. A web-based international survey was designed and disseminated through social networks, emails, or direct messages. Two hundred forty-one answers were received. From these, 26 were excluded (13 due to missing location and 13 duplicated answers), resulting in a final number of 215 answers. Europe accounted for 35% of responses ( n  = 77), South America 22.4% ( n  = 49), North America 19% ( n  = 41), Asia 16.5% ( n  = 36), Central America 2.7% ( n  = 6), Oceania, and Africa 2.2% each ( n  = 5 each). Before the pandemic, reported admission/visiting policies already varied between continents. Family time schedules remained similar to the prepandemic period in half of European, Central, and South American units and have changed in 60% of Asian, African, North American, and Oceanian units. Access to PICUs has been granted for patients and caregivers tested negative for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS COV-2) in only part of studied PICUs. Isolation precautions for the visitors were intensified at the onset of the pandemic. Changes in visiting policies were observed in most PICUs worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic, with some PICUs prohibiting any visitation by families. These changes can decrease possibilities of parental participation in emotional support and reduction of sedation needs, early mobility, and shared decision-making process and impact negatively both children and parental well-being and even patients' outcomes.

Qualitative study of factors affecting engagement with a hospital-based violence intervention programme in Indianapolis, Indiana

Background

There are few qualitative studies of firearm injury survivors and hospital-based violence intervention programme (HVIP) participants. The original study aimed to identify facilitators and barriers to survivors' utilisation of mental health services. This secondary analysis aimed to identify factors that may impact engagement with an HVIP.

Study design

This study was a subanalysis of an original qualitative study that used a community-based participatory research approach to conduct semistructured interviews with English-speaking, intentional firearm injury survivors aged 13 and older within Indianapolis, Indiana between 2021 and 2022. Participants were recruited by a community organisation through a snowball sampling method. Interviews were analysed using manual thematic analysis. Themes were analysed and discussed in relation to HVIPs.

Results

A total of 18 interviews were completed. The majority of participants identified as black (17/18, 94.4%). Nearly all (75%) participants were between the ages of 13 and 24 years of age at the time of their shooting. During content analysis, five themes were identified: (1) delayed readiness to change, (2) desire for independence, (3) lack of trust, (4) persistent emotional and physical effects of trauma and (5) unawareness of HVIP resources.

Conclusions

This qualitative analysis of firearm injury survivor experiences provided insights for improved engagement with HVIPs. Continued pursuit of survivors for several years after their injury, improved dissemination of resources, establishing trust, and addressing persistent physical and psychological symptoms while respecting participants' desire for independence may lead to increased engagement of firearm injury survivors with HVIPs.

The Future of Social Media, Anesthesiology, and the Perioperative Physician

Social media has rapidly developed in the past decade to become a powerful and influential force for patients, physicians, health systems, and the academic community. While the use of social media in health care has produced many positive changes, such as rapid dissemination of information, crowd-sourced sharing of knowledge, learning, and social interaction, social media in health care has also negative effects. Recent examples of negative impacts of social media include rapid and unchecked information dissemination leading to patient misinformation and inadvertent reputational harm for health care professionals due to engaging in controversial topics on public platforms. Members of the anesthesiology community, like other medical specialties, have rapidly adopted social media at many different levels. However, most anesthesiologists, health systems, and academic communities have little education, preparation, and guidelines on optimizing the use of social media technology while minimizing the risks of social media. Anesthesiology has been and will continue to be impacted by the forces of technology and the cultural influences of social media for the foreseeable future. The purpose of this article was to examine the recent history of social media adoption in anesthesiology and perioperative medicine, understand the current impact of social media across our specialty, and consider how the future development of technology and evolving social and cultural dynamic influences of social media will have on anesthesiology over the next quarter century.

[A review of research on psychological and behavioral problems in children with autism spectrum disorder during the coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic]

Since December 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been rapidly spreading worldwide and affecting the physical and mental health of the general population. It may have even more serious potential harm to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This paper provides a literature review on the psychological and behavioral problems experienced by children with ASD during the COVID-19 epidemic, as well as the factors influencing these issues. The findings of this review can serve as a basis for clinical research on ASD children.

The International Natural Product Sciences Taskforce (INPST) and the power of Twitter networking exemplified through #INPST hashtag analysis

BACKGROUND

The development of digital technologies and the evolution of open innovation approaches have enabled the creation of diverse virtual organizations and enterprises coordinating their activities primarily online. The open innovation platform titled "International Natural Product Sciences Taskforce" (INPST) was established in 2018, to bring together in collaborative environment individuals and organizations interested in natural product scientific research, and to empower their interactions by using digital communication tools.

METHODS

In this work, we present a general overview of INPST activities and showcase the specific use of Twitter as a powerful networking tool that was used to host a one-week "2021 INPST Twitter Networking Event" (spanning from 31st May 2021 to 6th June 2021) based on the application of the Twitter hashtag #INPST.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

The use of this hashtag during the networking event period was analyzed with Symplur Signals (https://www.symplur.com/), revealing a total of 6,036 tweets, shared by 686 users, which generated a total of 65,004,773 impressions (views of the respective tweets). This networking event's achieved high visibility and participation rate showcases a convincing example of how this social media platform can be used as a highly effective tool to host virtual Twitter-based international biomedical research events.

Characteristics and Outcomes of Critically Ill Children With Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome

OBJECTIVES

To characterize the prevalence of pediatric critical illness from multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) and to assess the influence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) strain on outcomes.

DESIGN

Retrospective cohort study.

SETTING

Database evaluation using the Virtual Pediatric Systems Database.

PATIENTS

All children with MIS-C admitted to the PICU in 115 contributing hospitals between January 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

Of the 145,580 children admitted to the PICU during the study period, 1,338 children (0.9%) were admitted with MIS-C with the largest numbers of children admitted in quarter 1 (Q1) of 2021 ( n = 626). The original SARS-CoV-2 viral strain and the D614G Strain were the predominant strains through 2020, with Alpha B.1.1.7 predominating in Q1 and quarter 2 (Q2) of 2021. Overall, the median PICU length of stay (LOS) was 2.7 days (25-75% interquartile range [IQR], 1.6-4.7 d) with a median hospital LOS of 6.6 days (25-75% IQR, 4.7-9.3 d); 15.2% received mechanical ventilation with a median duration of mechanical ventilation of 3.1 days (25-75% IQR, 1.9-5.8 d), and there were 11 hospital deaths. During the study period, there was a significant decrease in the median PICU and hospital LOS and a decrease in the frequency of mechanical ventilation, with the most significant decrease occurring between quarter 3 and quarter 4 (Q4) of 2020. Children admitted to a PICU from the general care floor or from another ICU/step-down unit had longer PICU LOS than those admitted directly from an emergency department.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall mortality from MIS-C was low, but the disease burden was high. There was a peak in MIS-C cases during Q1 of 2021, following a shift in viral strains in Q1 of 2021. However, an improvement in MIS-C outcomes starting in Q4 of 2020 suggests that viral strain was not the driving factor for outcomes in this population.

Evaluation of the Quality of COVID-19 Guidance Documents in Anaesthesia using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research & Evaluation II (AGREE II) Instrument

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

The Use of Social Media in Children and Adolescents: Scoping Review on the Potential Risks

In recent years, social media has become part of our lives, even among children. From the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic period, media device and Internet access rapidly increased. Adolescents connected Internet alone, consulting social media, mostly Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. During "lockdown", the Internet usage allowed communication with peers and the continuity activities such as school teaching. However, we have to keep in mind that media usage may be related to some adverse consequences especially in the most vulnerable people, such as the young. Aim of the review is to focus on risks correlated to social media use by children and adolescents, identifying spies of rising problems and engaging in preventive recommendations. The scoping review was performed according to PRISMA guidelines, searching on PubMed the terms "social media" or "social network", "health", and "pediatrics". Excluding articles not pertinent, we found 68 reports. Out of them, 19 were dealing with depression, 15 with diet, and 15 with psychological problems, which appeared to be the most reported risk of social media use. Other identified associated problems were sleep, addiction, anxiety, sex related issues, behavioral problems, body image, physical activity, online grooming, sight, headache, and dental caries. Public and medical awareness must rise over this topic and new prevention measures must be found, starting with health practitioners, caregivers, and websites/application developers. Pediatricians should be aware of the risks associated to a problematic social media use for the young's health and identify sentinel signs in children as well as prevent negative outcomes in accordance with the family.

The pandemic within the pandemic: the surge of neuropsychological disorders in Italian children during the COVID-19 era

Background

Quarantine and isolation measures during COVID-19 pandemic may have caused additional stress and challenged the mental health of the youth. Aim of the study is to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic impact on neuropsychological disorders (NPD) of Italian children and adolescents to provide general pediatric recommendations.

Material and methods

A retrospective multicenter observational study was planned by the Italian Pediatric Society (SIP) to explore the impact of COVID-19 on the access of children to pediatric Emergency Departments (pED) for the evaluation of neuropsychological symptoms, collecting the classification codes of diagnoses between March 1, 2019 and March 2, 2021. The period study was split into two sub-periods: a pre COVID-19 period (from March 1 2019 to March 1, 2020) and a COVID-19 period (from March 2, 2020 to March 2, 2021). As additional information, data on NPD hospitalizations in any pediatric department of the involved centers were recorded.

Results

During the study period, a total of 533,318 children were admitted to the pED involved in the study. Despite a 48.2% decline of pED admissions, there was a significant increase (83.1%) in patient admissions for NPD. The most frequent NPD conditions which increased during the COVID-19 pandemic were suicidal ideation (+ 147%), depression (+ 115%), eating disorder (+ 78.4%), and psychosis (+ 17.2%). During the pandemic period, a 39.5% increase in NPD hospitalizations was observed as well. The NPD disorders that mostly required hospitalizations were suicidal ideation (+ 134%), depression (+ 41.4%), eating disorder (+ 31.4%), and drug abuse (+ 26.7%).

COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on children's health, mainly on their NPD development. Neuropsychological assessment should be required at the primary level, in the pediatrician's office, to facilitate early capture of the sign of impairment and provide an adequate treatment.

Conclusion

SIP underlines the psychological consequences of COVID 19 pandemic on the youngest and recommends an early identification of NPD in the pediatric population to avoid other serious consequences for children's physical and mental health.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13052-022-01324-4.

Information Dissemination Model in Rural Live Broadcasting under Blockchain in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

This work aims to improve the information dissemination atmosphere of rural live broadcasting and ensure its long-term development. First, it studies and analyzes the current situation and characteristics of rural live broadcasting. Then, it discusses the blockchain (BC) technology and information dissemination mode in the era of artificial intelligence (AI). Finally, the characteristics of BC technology (BT) and the information dissemination model are discussed. A BT-optimized susceptible exposed infected recovered (SEIR) information dissemination model is proposed. The results show that the BT-optimized SEIR model has no effect on the traditional information transmission characteristics and can ensure the conventional transmission of all information. Additionally, BT can effectively improve the overall transmission efficiency of the SEIR model for false information and accurate information and effectively shorten the duration. Specifically, the BT-optimized SEIR model’s maximum false information transmission proportion is reduced by about 13%. The duration is reduced by 15 days over the traditional model. By comparison, in positive information dissemination, the maximum transmission proportion of the proposed BT-optimized SEIR model is about 19% higher than the traditional model. The duration is about 30 days longer. The research provides technical support for controlling and improving the current situation and atmosphere of rural live broadcasting information dissemination.

Identifying Social Media Competencies for Health Professionals: An International Modified Delphi Study to Determine Consensus for Curricular Design

STUDY OBJECTIVE

The use of social media by health professionals is widespread. However, there is a lack of training to support the effective use of these novel platforms that account for the nuances of an effective health and research communication. We sought to identify the competencies needed by health care professionals to develop an effective social media presence as a medical professional, with the goal of building a social media curriculum.

METHODS

We conducted a modified Delphi study, utilizing Kraiger's Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes framework to identify appropriate items for inclusion in a social media curriculum targeted at health care professionals. Experts in this space were defined as health care professionals who had delivered workshops, published papers, or developed prominent social media tools/accounts. They were recruited through a multimodal campaign to complete a series of 3 survey rounds designed to build consensus. In keeping with prior studies, a threshold of 80% endorsement was used for inclusion in the final list of items.

RESULTS

Ninety-eight participants met the expert criteria and were invited to participate in the study. Of the 98 participants, 92 (94%) experts completed the first round; of the 92 experts who completed the first round, 83 (90%) completed the second round; and of the 83 experts who completed the second round, 81 (98%) completed the third round of the Delphi study. Eighteen new items were suggested in the first survey and incorporated into the study. A total of 46 items met the 80% inclusion threshold.

CONCLUSION

We identified 46 items that were believed to be important for health care professionals using social media. This list should inform the development of curricular activities and objectives.

Pediatric Critical Care in Resource Limited Settings-Lessening the Gap Through Ongoing Collaboration, Advancement in Research and Technological Innovations

Pediatric critical care has continued to advance since our last article, "Pediatric Critical Care in Resource-Limited Settings-Overview and Lessons Learned" was written just 3 years ago. In that article, we reviewed the history, current state, and gaps in level of care between low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and high-income countries (HICs). In this article, we have highlighted recent advancements in pediatric critical care in LMICs in the areas of research, training and education, and technology. We acknowledge how the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to increasing the speed of some developments. We discuss the advancements, some lessons learned, as well as the ongoing gaps that need to be addressed in the coming decade. Continued understanding of the importance of equitable sustainable partnerships in the bidirectional exchange of knowledge and collaboration in all advancement efforts (research, technology, etc.) remains essential to guide all of us to new frontiers in pediatric critical care.

Entanglements of affect, space, and evidence in pandemic healthcare: An analysis of Australian healthcare workers' experiences of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to highlight both global interconnectedness and schisms across place, context and peoples. While countries such as Australia have securitised their borders in response to the global spread of disease, flows of information and collective affect continue to permeate these boundaries. Drawing on interviews with Australian healthcare workers, we examine how their experiences of the pandemic are shaped by affect and evidence ‘traveling’ across time and space. Our analysis points to the limitations of global health crisis responses that focus solely on material risk and spatial separation. Institutional responses must, we suggest, also consider the affective and discursive dimensions of health-related risk environments.

Deep Learning for Identification of Alcohol-Related Content on Social Media (Reddit and Twitter): Exploratory Analysis of Alcohol-Related Outcomes

BACKGROUND

Many social media studies have explored the ability of thematic structures, such as hashtags and subreddits, to identify information related to a wide variety of mental health disorders. However, studies and models trained on specific themed communities are often difficult to apply to different social media platforms and related outcomes. A deep learning framework using thematic structures from Reddit and Twitter can have distinct advantages for studying alcohol abuse, particularly among the youth in the United States.

OBJECTIVE

This study proposes a new deep learning pipeline that uses thematic structures to identify alcohol-related content across different platforms. We apply our method on Twitter to determine the association of the prevalence of alcohol-related tweets with alcohol-related outcomes reported from the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, Centers for Disease Control Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, county health rankings, and the National Industry Classification System.

METHODS

The Bidirectional Encoder Representations From Transformers neural network learned to classify 1,302,524 Reddit posts as either alcohol-related or control subreddits. The trained model identified 24 alcohol-related hashtags from an unlabeled data set of 843,769 random tweets. Querying alcohol-related hashtags identified 25,558,846 alcohol-related tweets, including 790,544 location-specific (geotagged) tweets. We calculated the correlation between the prevalence of alcohol-related tweets and alcohol-related outcomes, controlling for confounding effects of age, sex, income, education, and self-reported race, as recorded by the 2013-2018 American Community Survey.

RESULTS

Significant associations were observed: between alcohol-hashtagged tweets and alcohol consumption (P=.01) and heavy drinking (P=.005) but not binge drinking (P=.37), self-reported at the metropolitan-micropolitan statistical area level; between alcohol-hashtagged tweets and self-reported excessive drinking behavior (P=.03) but not motor vehicle fatalities involving alcohol (P=.21); between alcohol-hashtagged tweets and the number of breweries (P<.001), wineries (P<.001), and beer, wine, and liquor stores (P<.001) but not drinking places (P=.23), per capita at the US county and county-equivalent level; and between alcohol-hashtagged tweets and all gallons of ethanol consumed (P<.001), as well as ethanol consumed from wine (P<.001) and liquor (P=.01) sources but not beer (P=.63), at the US state level.

CONCLUSIONS

Here, we present a novel natural language processing pipeline developed using Reddit's alcohol-related subreddits that identify highly specific alcohol-related Twitter hashtags. The prevalence of identified hashtags contains interpretable information about alcohol consumption at both coarse (eg, US state) and fine-grained (eg, metropolitan-micropolitan statistical area level and county) geographical designations. This approach can expand research and deep learning interventions on alcohol abuse and other behavioral health outcomes.

The applications of eHealth technologies in the management of asthma and allergic diseases

Portable devices, such as smartphones and mobile Internet access have become ubiquitous in the last decades. The term 'eHealth' stands for electronic health. The tools included in the eHealth concept utilize phones, computers and the Internet and related applications to improve the health care industry. Implementation of eHealth technologies has been documented for the management of different chronic diseases, including asthma and allergic conditions. Clinicians and patients have gained opportunity to communicate in new ways, which could be used cost-effectively to improve disease control and quality of life of those affected. Additionally, these innovations bring new opportunities to academic researchers. For example, eHealth has allowed researchers to compile data points that were previously unavailable or difficult to access, and analyse them using novel tools, collectively described as 'big data'. The role of eHealth become more important since early 2020, due to the physical distancing rules and the restrictions on mobility that have been applied worldwide as a response to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. In this review, we summarize the most recent developments in various eHealth platforms and their relevance to the speciality of allergy and immunology, from the point of view of three major stakeholders: clinicians, patients and researchers.

Dissemination of Anesthesia Information During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic Through Twitter: An Infodemiology Study

BACKGROUND

Twitter is a web-based social media platform that allows instantaneous sharing of user-generated messages (tweets). We performed an infodemiology study of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Twitter conversation related to anesthesiology to describe how Twitter has been used during the pandemic and ways to optimize Twitter use by anesthesiologists.

METHODS

This was a cross-sectional study of tweets related to the specialty of anesthesiology and COVID-19 tweeted between January 21 and October 13, 2020. A publicly available COVID-19 Twitter dataset was filtered for tweets meeting inclusion criteria (tweets including anesthesiology keywords). Using descriptive statistics, tweets were reviewed for tweet and account characteristics. Tweets were filtered for specific topics of interest likely to be impactful or informative to anesthesiologists of COVID-19 practice (airway management, personal protective equipment, ventilators, COVID testing, and pain management). Tweet activity was also summarized descriptively to show temporal profiles over the pandemic.

RESULTS

Between January 21 and October 13, 2020, 23,270 of 241,732,881 tweets (0.01%) met inclusion criteria and were generated by 15,770 accounts. The majority (51.9%) of accounts were from the United States. Seven hundred forty-nine (4.8%) of all users self-reported as anesthesiologists. 33.8% of all tweets included at least one word or phrase preceded by the # symbol (hashtag), which functions as a label to search for all tweets including a specific hashtag, with the most frequently used being #anesthesia. About half (52.2%) of all tweets included at least one hyperlink, most frequently linked to other social media, news organizations, medical organizations, or scientific publications. The majority of tweets (67%) were not retweeted. COVID-19 anesthesia tweet activity started before the pandemic was declared. The trend of daily tweet activity was similar to, and preceded, the US daily death count by about 2 weeks.

CONCLUSIONS

The toll of the pandemic has been reflected in the anesthesiology conversation on Twitter, representing 0.01% of all COVID-19 tweets. Daily tweet activity showed how the Twitter community used the platform to learn about important topics impacting anesthesiology practice during a global pandemic. Twitter is a relevant platform through which to communicate about anesthesiology topics, but further research is required to delineate its effectiveness, benefits, and limitations for anesthesiology discussions.

Modern Health Journalism and the Impact of Social Media

Scholarly journals are hubs of hypotheses, evidence-based data, and practice recommendations that shape health research and practice worldwide. The advancement of science and information technologies has made online accessibility a basic requirement, paving the way for the advent of open access publishing, and more recently, to web-based health journalism. Especially in the time of the current pandemic, health professionals have turned to the internet, and primarily to social media, as a source of rapid information transfer and international communication. Hence, the current pandemic has ushered an era of digital transformation of science, and we attempt to understand and assess the impact of this digitization on modern health journalism.

Building a community of practice through social media using the hashtag #neoEBM

Objectives

Social media use is associated with developing communities of practice that promote the rapid exchange of information across traditional institutional and geographical boundaries faster than previously possible. We aimed to describe and share our experience using #neoEBM (Neonatal Evidence Based Medicine) hashtag to organise and build a digital community of neonatal care practice.

Materials and methods

Analysis of #neoEBM Twitter data in the Symplur Signals database between 1 May 2018 to 9 January 2021. Data on tweets containing the #neoEBM hashtag were analysed using online analytical tools, including the total number of tweets and user engagement.

Results

Since its registration, a total of 3 228 distinct individual Twitter users used the hashtag with 23 939 tweets and 37 259 710 impressions generated. The two days with the greatest number of tweets containing #neoEBM were 8 May 2018 (n = 218) and 28 April 2019 (n = 340), coinciding with the annual Pediatric Academic Societies meeting. The majority of Twitter users made one tweet using #neoEBM (n = 1078), followed by two tweets (n = 411) and more than 10 tweets (n = 347). The number of individual impressions (views) of tweets containing #neoEBM was 37 259 710. Of the 23 939 tweets using #neoEBM, 17 817 (74%) were retweeted (shared), 15 643 (65%) included at least one link and 1 196 (5%) had at least one reply. As #neoEBM users increased over time, so did tweets containing #neoEBM, with each additional user of the hashtag associated with a mean increase in 7.8 (95% CI 7.7–8.0) tweets containing #neoEBM.

Conclusion

Our findings support the observation that the #neoEBM community possesses many of the characteristics of a community of practice, and it may be an effective tool to disseminate research findings. By sharing our experiences, we hope to encourage others to engage with or build online digital communities of practice to share knowledge and build collaborative networks across disciplines, institutions and countries.

Emergency Medicine Influencers' Twitter Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-methods Analysis

INTRODUCTION

The objective of this study was to analyze the messages of influential emergency medicine (EM) Twitter users in the United States (US) during the early stages of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic by characterizing the themes, emotional tones, temporal viewpoints, and depth of engagement with the tweets.

METHODS

We performed a retrospective mixed-methods analysis of publicly available Twitter data derived from the publicly available "Coronavirus Tweet IDs" dataset, March 3, 2020-May 1, 2020. Original tweets and modified retweets in the dataset by 50 influential EM Twitter users in the US were analyzed using linguistic software to report the emotional tone and temporal viewpoint. We qualitatively analyzed a 25% random subsample and report themes.

RESULTS

There were 1315 tweets available in the dataset from 36/50 influential EM Twitter users in the US. The majority of tweets were either positive (455/1315, 34.6%) or neutral (407/1315, 31%) in tone and focused on the present (1009/1315, 76.7%). Qualitative analysis identified six distinct themes, with users most often sharing news or clinical information.

CONCLUSIONS

During the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, influential EM Twitter users in the US delivered mainly positive or neutral messages, most often pertaining to news stories or information directly relating to patient care. The majority of these messages led to engagement by other users. This study underscores how EM influencers can leverage social media in public health outbreaks to bring attention to topics of importance.

COVID-19-related misinformation on social media: a systematic review

Objective

To review misinformation related to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on social media during the first phase of the pandemic and to discuss ways of countering misinformation.

Methods

We searched PubMed®, Scopus, Embase®, PsycInfo and Google Scholar databases on 5 May 2020 and 1 June 2020 for publications related to COVID-19 and social media which dealt with misinformation and which were primary empirical studies. We followed the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses and the guidelines for using a measurement tool to assess systematic reviews. Evidence quality and the risk of bias of included studies were classified using the grading of recommendations assessment, development and evaluation approach. The review is registered in the international prospective register of systematic reviews (PROSPERO; CRD42020182154).

Findings

We identified 22 studies for inclusion in the qualitative synthesis. The proportion of COVID-19 misinformation on social media ranged from 0.2% (413/212 846) to 28.8% (194/673) of posts. Of the 22 studies, 11 did not categorize the type of COVID-19-related misinformation, nine described specific misinformation myths and two reported sarcasm or humour related to COVID-19. Only four studies addressed the possible consequences of COVID-19-related misinformation: all reported that it led to fear or panic.

Conclusion

Social media play an increasingly important role in spreading both accurate information and misinformation. The findings of this review may help health-care organizations prepare their responses to subsequent phases in the COVID–19 infodemic and to future infodemics in general.

Breakthrough healthcare technologies in the COVID-19 era: a unique opportunity for cardiovascular practitioners and patients

INTRODUCTION

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by symptomatic severe acute respiratory syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, has wreaked havoc globally, challenging the healthcare, economical, technological and social status quo of developing but also developed countries. For instance, the COVID-19 scare has reduced timely hospital admissions for ST-elevation myocardial infarction in Europe and the USA, causing unnecessary deaths and disabilities. While the emergency is still ongoing, enough efforts have been put to study and tackle this condition such that a comprehensive perspective and synthesis on the potential role of breakthrough healthcare technologies is possible. Indeed, current state-of-the-art information technologies can provide a unique opportunity to adapt and adjust to the current healthcare needs associated with COVID-19, either directly or indirectly, and in particular those of cardiovascular patients and practitioners.

EVIDENCE ACQUISITION

We searched several biomedical databases, websites and social media, including PubMed, Medscape, and Twitter, for smartcare approaches suitable for application in the COVID-19 pandemic.

EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS

We retrieved details on several promising avenues for present and future healthcare technologies, capable of substantially reduce the mortality, morbidity, and resource use burden of COVID-19 as well as that of cardiovascular disease. In particular, we have found data supporting the importance of data sharing, model sharing, preprint archiving, social media, medical case sharing, distance learning and continuous medical education, smartphone apps, telemedicine, robotics, big data analysis, machine learning, and deep learning, with the ultimate goal of optimization of individual prevention, diagnosis, tracing, risk-stratification, treatment and rehabilitation.

CONCLUSIONS

We are confident that refinement and command of smartcare technologies will prove extremely beneficial in the short-term, but also dramatically reshape cardiovascular practice and healthcare delivery in the long-term future, for COVID-19 as well as other diseases.

Growth of the Digital Footprint of the Society of Critical Care Medicine Annual Congress: 2014-2020

Since 2014, the Society of Critical Care Medicine has encouraged "live-tweeting" through the use of specific hashtags at each annual Critical Care Congress. We describe how the digital footprint of the Society of Critical Care Medicine Congress on Twitter has evolved at a time when social media use at conferences is becoming increasingly popular.

DESIGN

We used Symplur Signals (Symplur LLC, Pasadena, CA) to track all tweets containing the Society of Critical Care Medicine Congress hashtag for each annual meeting between 2014 and 2020. We collected data on the number of tweets, tweet characteristics, and impressions (i.e., potential views) for each year and data on the characteristics of the top 100 most actively tweeting users of that Congress.

SETTING

Twitter.

SUBJECTS

Users tweeting with the Critical Care Congress hashtag.

INTERVENTIONS

Not applicable.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

The Critical Care Congress digital footprint grew substantially from 2014 to 2020. The 2014 Critical Care Congress included 1,629 tweets by 266 users, compared with 29,657 tweets by 3,551 participants in 2020; average hourly tweets increased from 9.7 to 177. The percentage of tweets with mentions of other users and tweets with visual media increased. Users attending the conference were significantly more likely to compose original tweets, whereas those tweeting from afar were more likely to retweet Critical Care Congress content. There was a yearly increase in content-specific hashtags used in conjunction with Critical Care Congress hashtags (n = 429 in 2014 to n = 22,272 in 2020), most commonly related to pediatrics (18% of all hashtags), mobility/rehab (9%), sepsis (7%) social media (6%), and ICU burnout (1%).

CONCLUSIONS

There has been significant growth in live-tweeting at the Critical Care Congress, along with the increased use of content-specific hashtags and visual media. This digital footprint is largely driven by a proportion of highly engaged users. As medical conferences transition to completely or partially online platforms, understanding of the digital footprint is crucial for success.

Mining twitter to explore the emergence of COVID-19 symptoms

BACKGROUND

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in United States initially alerted the public to three COVID-19 signs and symptoms-fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath. Concurrent social media posts reflected a wider range of symptoms of COVID-19 besides these three symptoms. Because social media data have a potential application in the early identification novel virus symptoms, this study aimed to explore what symptoms mentioned in COVID-19-related social media posts during the early stages of the pandemic.

METHODS

We collected COVID-19-related Twitter tweets posted in English language between March 30, 2020 and April 19, 2020 using search terms of COVID-19 synonyms and three common COVID-19 symptoms suggested by the CDC in March. Only unique tweets were extracted for analysis of symptom terms.

RESULTS

A total of 36 symptoms were extracted from 30,732 unique tweets. All the symptoms suggested by the CDC for COVID-19 screening in March, April, and May were mentioned in tweets posted during the early stages of the pandemic.

DISCUSSION

The findings of this study revealed that many COVID-19-related symptoms mentioned in Twitter tweets earlier than the announcement by the CDC. Monitoring social media data is a promising approach to public health surveillance.

The knowledge level and perceptions toward COVID-19 among Turkish final year medical students

BACKGROUND

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has upended medical education as well as the lives of healthcare professionals. Higher education institutions have a crucial role in the solution of public health problems by training young doctor candidates, and it is also essential to increase the knowledge level of physician candidates about the epidemic. So, in this study, we aimed to examine Turkish final year medical students' knowledge level and perceptions toward the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

The present descriptive multicentered study was conducted with the medical students in the final year of six medical schools located in six geographic regions of Turkey. After ethical approval, data were gathered using an online questionnaire through Google forms between 10 April 2020, and 20 April 2020.

RESULTS

In this national survey study, 860 volunteers answered the questions thoroughly. The median age was 24 (22-38) years. A total of 55.3% of the participants were female. The median knowledge level score was 69.0 (0-93.1). The knowledge level was moderate. A total of 34.2% of the participants had a high level of knowledge. A total of 48.7% of participants stated that they felt the most competent about performing CPR. Updates about COVID-19 were followed regularly by 84.5% of the participants.

CONCLUSION

We determined that final year medical students are knowledgeable and aware of this pandemic. We, medical educators, should inculcate relevant knowledge and educate the medical students to improve practices in the current pandemic, as well as for future epidemics. Different learning techniques should be added to the curriculum, especially at the time which widespread panic and uncertainty are prevalent.