Tsuya Atsushi, Sugawara Yuya, Tanaka Atsushi, Narimatsu Hiroto
Yamagata University Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Yamagata University, Yonezawa, Japan .
J Med Internet Res. 2014 May 27;16(5):e137. doi: 10.2196/jmir.3298.
Twitter is an interactive, real-time media that could prove useful in health care. Tweets from cancer patients could offer insight into the needs of cancer patients.
The objective of this study was to understand cancer patients' social media usage and gain insight into patient needs.
A search was conducted of every publicly available user profile on Twitter in Japan for references to the following: breast cancer, leukemia, colon cancer, rectal cancer, colorectal cancer, uterine cancer, cervical cancer, stomach cancer, lung cancer, and ovarian cancer. We then used an application programming interface and a data mining method to conduct a detailed analysis of the tweets from cancer patients.
Twitter user profiles included references to breast cancer (n=313), leukemia (n=158), uterine or cervical cancer (n=134), lung cancer (n=87), colon cancer (n=64), and stomach cancer (n=44). A co-occurrence network is seen for all of these cancers, and each cancer has a unique network conformation. Keywords included words about diagnosis, symptoms, and treatments for almost all cancers. Words related to social activities were extracted for breast cancer. Words related to vaccination and support from public insurance were extracted for uterine or cervical cancer.
This study demonstrates that cancer patients share information about their underlying disease, including diagnosis, symptoms, and treatments, via Twitter. This information could prove useful to health care providers.
推特是一种交互式实时媒体,在医疗保健领域可能会很有用。癌症患者发布的推文可以让我们深入了解癌症患者的需求。
本研究的目的是了解癌症患者对社交媒体的使用情况,并深入了解患者需求。
对日本推特上所有公开的用户资料进行搜索,查找以下相关内容:乳腺癌、白血病、结肠癌、直肠癌、结直肠癌、子宫癌、宫颈癌、胃癌、肺癌和卵巢癌。然后,我们使用应用程序编程接口和数据挖掘方法对癌症患者的推文进行详细分析。
推特用户资料中提及了乳腺癌(n = 313)、白血病(n = 158)、子宫癌或宫颈癌(n = 134)、肺癌(n = 87)、结肠癌(n = 64)和胃癌(n = 44)。所有这些癌症都存在共现网络,且每种癌症都有独特的网络结构。几乎所有癌症的关键词都包括有关诊断、症状和治疗的词汇。与社交活动相关的词汇是从乳腺癌患者推文中提取的。与疫苗接种和公共保险支持相关的词汇是从子宫癌或宫颈癌患者推文中提取的。
本研究表明,癌症患者通过推特分享有关其基础疾病的信息,包括诊断、症状和治疗方法。这些信息可能对医疗保健提供者有用。