Mobile Platforms and Social Media in Educating and Monitoring

Question: Discuss about the Mobile Platforms and Social Media in Educating and Monitoring Health and Disease. Answer: The social media and mobile platforms are changing the way we receive, communicate and share health and disease information. Apart from the current application of these platforms in the health industry, there are still unexplored opportunities. The social media can be used to share videos and images on various topics including vaccination, tobacco cessation, healthy diets and importance of physical activity. It can be used to address the emerging non-communicable chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart diseases, pulmonary chronic obstructive disease (COPD) and hypertension. Social media and mobile platforms can give patients access to this rare information on demand. Healthcare professionals have been using the social media to provide information on treatment programs as well as disease prevention (Mowafa, 2014). Besides, healthcare institutions are offering information on their healthcare offers. The social media can be used as a tool for monitoring diseases and health. Patients and even healthy individuals constantly share health information on social media. For individuals with chronic diseases, mobile apps can be used to monitor blood pressure, spirometry values, glucose levels and oxygen saturation (Santoro et al., 2015). The use of the social media for education and monitoring health and disease should adhere to the established ethical standards. There should be compliance with standards of patient privacy protection as well as online professionalism. Dissemination of myths and misinformation about health and disease through the social media and mobile platform should be avoided. It is evident that these platforms are presenting endless opportunities in education and monitoring of health and diseases. Bibliography Mowafa, H., 2014. Social Media and Mobile Technologies for Healthcare. Hershey PA, USA: Medical Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global). Santoro, E. et al., 2015. Social media and mobile applications in chronic disease prevention and management. Frontiers in psychology, 6(1), p.567.