T-19: Role of Social Media in Patient-Reported Outcomes (PRO) Research

Poster Presenter

Amit Dang

Founder and CEO
MarksMan Healthcare Communications
India

Objectives

To understand how PROs is gaining importance like other outcomes and are increasingly being recognised as important tools in adding value to drug review and evaluation process. The review also highlights as how publication of data based on PROs is likely to find its way onto social media.

Method

There is growing realization for the patient-centered healthcare system. The outcomes of a clinical intervention obtained by the patient i.e. patient-reported outcomes (PROs) seemed to be of more importance in coming years than any other outcomes like clinical, physiological or caregiver-reported.

Results

Social media represents a brave new world for healthcare. Evidence from literature finds that healthcare organizations, clinicians and patients can benefit from the use of social media. In the western world, PROs are increasingly recognized as important tools in adding value to the drug review and evaluation process. Under the auspices of marketing strategy, researchers are gleaning abundant personal information about patients through social media Health care is moving towards a value-based system, where improving PROs such as, QoL- are benchmarks of good clinical practice. There is a gradual but real momentum in clinical research to use PROs. Companies now certainly need to look into new forms of communication technology to demonstrate the value of products to a wider audience beyond the traditional physician pool.

Conclusion

The future of social media seems to have a good foundation in the healthcare industry to effectively change the standard face-to-face and paper-trail methods of health care delivery. While increasing public demand will continue to upgrade the provider-patient experience and patient-advocacy interface of social media, effective methods of collecting PROs, on the other hand, may require more systematic collective thinking and future consensus. The publication of data based on such PROs is likely to find its way onto social media and patient-web sites and such information is of interest to both patients and patient advocacy groups alike.