Promoting Research, Awareness, and Discussion on AI in Medicine Using #MedTwitterAI: A Longitudinal Twitter Hashtag Analysis

Ethical and legal considerations in healthcare AI: innovation and policy for safe and fair use

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming healthcare by enhancing diagnostics, personalizing medicine and improving surgical precision. However, its integration into healthcare systems raises significant ethical and legal challenges. This review explores key ethical principles-autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, transparency and accountability-highlighting their relevance in AI-driven decision-making. Legal challenges, including data privacy and security, liability for AI errors, regulatory approval processes, intellectual property and cross-border regulations, are also addressed. As AI systems become increasingly autonomous, questions of responsibility and fairness must be carefully considered, particularly with the potential for biased algorithms to amplify healthcare disparities. This paper underscores the importance of multi-disciplinary collaboration between technologists, healthcare providers, legal experts and policymakers to create adaptive, globally harmonized frameworks. Public engagement is emphasized as essential for fostering trust and ensuring ethical AI adoption. With AI technologies advancing rapidly, a flexible regulatory environment that evolves with innovation is critical. Aligning AI innovation with ethical and legal imperatives will lead to a safer, more equitable healthcare system for all.

Is global health truly global? A hashtag analysis of #GlobalHealth disparities on X

Background

X (Formerly known as Twitter) healthcare hashtags are a popular healthcare informatics and educational tool among medical professionals. #Globalhealth is one such widely used hashtag with extensive engagement. This study analyses #GlobalHealth to understand its pattern, global digital distribution, and other parameters during the COVID-19 pandemic on X.

Methods

Data was collected by utilizing posts using #GlobalHealth on X from 1st December 2019 to 1st November 2022. The analysis was performed using Symplur Signals to assess several parameters, such as the cumulative number of posts, impressions, category of users, co-occurring hashtags, and geolocation. The Symplur Rank system was used to assess the impact of influencers using the hashtag.

Results

A total of 843,762 posts were shared by 150,408 X users, with 4,639,144,304 impressions. Most posts (73.8%) were made by unclassified accounts, followed by doctors (4.2%), followed by other health workers. The #COVID19 was the most common co-occurring hashtag (43%). The top locations and the most influential X users came from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Among the top 25 most influential handles, a maximum (N = 09) were based in the United States-most profiles (N = 10) were categorized as international organizations followed by journals (N = 03).

Conclusion

The study gives a glimpse into the discrepancies in global distribution and stakeholders of #GlobalHealth. Most posts originated from the global north, which hints at how the trend to #GlobalHealth is not perhaps as global as it is thought to be, and it also reflects upon the real-world scenarios in the context of Global Health Equity. Thus, deeper and wider studies on this digital discrepancy may add more to the existing discourse on the topic.

Establishment and implementation of a clinical application and research database for surgical robots in China

Robots are widely used in surgeries worldwide. To improve robotic surgical treatments, we established a database of clinical applications and research on surgical robots. Robotics‐related literature included in the China national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang, Vipshop, Chinese science citation database (CSCD), Web of Science, EMBASE, PubMed, and Cochrane databases up to September 2022 was searched and entered into the database. Information on all patients who had undergone robotic surgery at our hospital since 2016 was also included. Literature and case information was classified and evaluated according to standard guidelines and statements. The Gansu Provincial Hospital was the first to use evidence‐based medical research methods to successfully establish a database of clinical applications and research on surgical robots. This database comprised literature search, upload, quality evaluation, risk of bias assessment, case information entry, and access functions. Based on the database, we conducted related studies in general surgery, gynecology, urology, thoracic surgery, and cardiovascular surgery, and published 16 meta‐analyses and 15 clinical studies. Establishing this database removes language, retrieval, and evaluation barriers in clinicians' use of clinical evidence and lays the foundation for the efficient and accurate use of clinical data for future research. Further, it facilitates evidence‐based evaluation of the effectiveness of robotic therapy, which may guide future medical practice. This typical case of interdisciplinary research aims to build a platform to disseminate knowledge and technology in robotic surgery.

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Challenges and opportunities for sarcoma care and research in Latin America: a position paper from the LACOG sarcoma group

As a developing region, Latin America faces unique cancer control and prevention challenges, which are intensified when considering rare cancers, including sarcomas. Sarcomas are a group of malignancies that arise in the connective tissues of the body-such as muscle, fat, nerves, blood vessels, and bones-accounting for a diverse range of tumours that, although rare, require specialized attention. Sarcoma care and research in Latin America require a comprehensive approach that includes deeper epidemiologic knowledge, diagnostic capacity building, access to innovative treatments, increased patient advocacy, and strengthening of clinical research capacity. This article will review current challenges and opportunities for treating patients with sarcoma in Latin America and outline a pathway toward improvement for regional collaborative groups.

Use of #NutritionFacts to promote evidence-based nutrition information: X (formerly Twitter) hashtag analysis study

Nutrition is a key determinant of health, and the dissemination of reliable nutrition information to consumers is of great importance for public health. Especially with the rise of digital communication technologies and the wide-spread online misinformation, the provision of qualitative science-based information related to diet is of great importance. The NutritionFacts.org has been established as a prominent online source of evidence-based nutrition information. In this work we aimed to investigate the use of the associated hashtag #NutritionFacts on X (formerly Twitter) over a 5 years period, from 10th of April 2018 to 10th of April 2023. The conducted analysis with the use of Symplur Signals revealed that 18,998 tweets mentioning #NutritionFacts were posted by 6,136 X users, generating a total of 50,348,223 impressions (views). Both institutional and individual accounts were broadly participating in the dissemination of #NutritionFacts tweets, and the user location profiling indicated wide international engagement with the hashtag. This work indicates that #NutritionFacts has been established as an important hashtag utilized on X for the dissemination of evidence-based information related to nutrition.

Global narratives on unequal outcomes produced by lockdown in Africa: A social science perspective on the “one-size-fits all” COVID-19 response

Introduction

Lockdown measures were introduced worldwide to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and several studies showed the positive impacts of these policies in places such as China and Europe. Many African governments also imposed lockdowns at the beginning of the pandemic. These lockdowns met with mixed reactions; some were positive, but others focused on concerns about the consequences of lockdowns.

Methods

In this article, we use social listening to examine social media narratives to investigate how people balanced concerns about preventing the spread of COVID-19 with other priorities. Analyzing social media conversations is one way of accessing different voices in real time, including those that often go unheard. As internet access grows and social media becomes more popular in Africa, it provides a different space for engagement, allowing people to connect with opinions outside of their own conceptual frameworks and disrupting hierarchies of how knowledge is shaped.

Results

This article indicates which narratives were favored by different organizations, stakeholders, and the general public, and which of these narratives are most dominant in policy discourses. The range of narratives is found to be reflective of the blindness to inequality and social difference of much decision-making by policymakers.

Discussion

Thus, contrary to the “we are all in this together” narrative, diseases and public health responses to them clearly discriminate, accentuating long-standing structural inequalities locally, nationally, and globally, as well as interplaying with multiple, dynamic, and negotiated sources of marginalization. These and other insights from this article could play a useful role in understanding and interpreting how social media could be included in pandemic preparedness plans.

Impact of #PsychTwitter in promoting global psychiatry: A hashtag analysis study

Introduction

Multiple studies have shown how valuable Twitter hashtags can be for promoting content related to different themes in the online community. This arena has grown into a rich data source for public health observation and understanding key trends in healthcare on a global scale. In the field of mental health in particular, it would be of benefit to understand and report the key stakeholders' (individual mental health professionals, academic organizations and their countries) trends and patterns of psychiatric knowledge and information dissemination using #PsychTwitter.

Objective

In this study, we aim to evaluate the achieved outreach of psychiatry-related tweets using the hashtag #PsychTwitter.

Methods

We utilized the Symplur Signals research analytics tool to characterize tweets containing #PsychTwitter from the 20th of August, 2019, to the 20th of August, 2022.

Results

The #PsychTwitter movement resulted in 125,297 tweets that were shared by 40,058 Twitter users and generated a total of 492,565,230 impressions (views). The three largest identified groups of contributors were Doctors (13.8% of all tweets), Org. Advocacy (6.2% of all tweets), and Researcher/Academic (4% of all tweets) stakeholders. The top influential accounts consisted of 55 psychiatrists and 16 institutional or organizational accounts. The top 5 countries from where most of the tweets containing #PsychTwitter were shared include the United States (54.3% of all users), the United Kingdom (10.4% of all users), Canada (4.9% of all users), India (2% of all users), and Australia (1.8% of all users).

Conclusion

This is the first of its kind study featuring the influence and usage of #PsychTwitter and covering its global impact in the field of psychiatry using the Twitter platform. Our results indicate that Twitter represents a broadly used platform for mental health-related discussions.