title: A medical consultation service on Facebook: descriptive analysis of questions answered.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Social media is used increasingly by the general public to access health information. However, a lack of models for health information distribution limits the presence of publicly funded services on social media sites.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The goal of the study was to present a model for delivering child health information to parents through a social media site.
  
  
  METHODS
  A Facebook site was launched for 11 months based on a question-and-answer service produced by a pediatrician and open to Facebook users over 18 years old. If the answer did not include a further referral to a health care service provider, the question was considered comprehensively answered. The site was funded by a pharmaceutical company, and it included an advertisement of a pharmaceutical product for children's fever and pain.
  
  
  RESULTS
  During the study, 768 questions were submitted: an average of 69.8 (SD 31.7) per month. There were 245,533 independent Facebook users on the site, with an average of 727.0 (SD 2280.6) per day. Infections were the most common theme in questions (355/768, 46.2%). Questions were more likely to be comprehensively answered if they were related to infections (279/355, 78.6%) than questions related to non-infectious symptoms (265/423, 64.2%, P=.003).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  On this site aimed at parents of small children, personalized answers were an effective way of delivering information. The service is likely to have reduced the need for further contacts with a health care service provider in more than half of the cases. The site could serve as a model for publicly funded health information distribution.
authors.affiliation: Children's Hospital, Helsinki University Central Hospital, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. otto.helve@helsinki.fi.
authors.forename: Otto
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6254-3180
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Helve
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006293:Health Promotion; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D057226:Information Seeking Behavior; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D012017:Referral and Consultation / Q000639:trends*; D061108:Social Media
keywords: Internet; health information; health promotion; social media