title: Ethical Issues of Social Media Usage in Healthcare.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Social media, web and mobile technologies are increasingly used in healthcare and directly support patientcentered care. Patients benefit from disease self-management tools, contact to others, and closer monitoring. Researchers study drug efficiency, or recruit patients for clinical studies via these technologies. However, low communication barriers in socialmedia, limited privacy and security issues lead to problems from an ethical perspective. This paper summarizes the ethical issues to be considered when social media is exploited in healthcare contexts.
  
  
  METHODS
  Starting from our experiences in social-media research, we collected ethical issues for selected social-media use cases in the context of patient-centered care. Results were enriched by collecting and analyzing relevant literature and were discussed and interpreted by members of the IMIA Social Media Working Group.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Most relevant issues in social-media applications are confidence and privacy that need to be carefully preserved. The patient-physician relationship can suffer from the new information gain on both sides since private information of both healthcare provider and consumer may be accessible through the Internet. Physicians need to ensure they keep the borders between private and professional intact. Beyond, preserving patient anonymity when citing Internet content is crucial for research studies.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Exploiting medical social-media in healthcare applications requires a careful reflection of roles and responsibilities. Availability of data and information can be useful in many settings, but the abuse of data needs to be prevented. Preserving privacy and confidentiality of online users is a main issue, as well as providing means for patients or Internet users to express concerns on data usage.
authors: Kerstin Denecke, Innovation Center Computer Assisted Surgery, Semmelweisstr. 14, 04103 Leipzig, Germany, Tel.: +49 341 971 2002, Fax: +49 341 971 2009, E-mail: Kerstin.Denecke@medizin.uni-leipzig.de.
authors: K
authors: K
authors: Denecke
authors: P
authors: P
authors: Bamidis
authors: C
authors: C
authors: Bond
authors: E
authors: E
authors: Gabarron
authors: M
authors: M
authors: Househ
authors: A Y S
authors: AY
authors: Lau
authors: M A
authors: MA
authors: Mayer
authors: M
authors: M
authors: Merolli
authors: M
authors: M
authors: Hansen
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000941:ethics*; D026690:Ethics, Clinical; D032984:Ethics, Research; D006801:Humans; D018802:Patient-Centered Care / Q000941:ethics; D061108:Social Media / Q000941:ethics*
keywords: Social media; health care ethics; information science; patientcentered care