Sugawara Yuya, Murakami Masayasu, Narimatsu Hiroto
Institute for Promotion of Medical Science Research, Faculty of Medicine, Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan.
Department of Health Policy Science, Graduate School of Medical Science, Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan.
JMIR Med Inform. 2020 Nov 27;8(11):e18666. doi: 10.2196/18666.
The use of social media by hospitals has become widespread in the United States and Western European countries. However, in Japan, the extent to which hospitals and clinics use social media is unknown. Furthermore, recent revisions to the Medical Care Act may subject social media content to regulation.
The purpose of this study was to examine social media use in Japanese hospitals and clinics. We investigated the adoption of social media, analyzed social media content, and compared content with medical advertising guidelines.
We randomly sampled 300 hospitals and 300 clinics from a list of medical institutions that was compiled by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. We performed web and social media (Facebook and Twitter) searches using the hospital and clinic names to determine whether they had social media accounts. We collected Facebook posts and Twitter tweets and categorized them based on their content (eg, health promotion, participation in academic meetings and publications, public relations or news announcements, and recruitment). We compared the collected content with medical advertising guidelines.
We found that 26.0% (78/300) of the hospitals and 7.7% (23/300) of the clinics used Facebook, Twitter, or both. Public relations or news announcements accounted for 53.99% (724/1341) of the Facebook posts by hospitals and 58.4% (122/209) of the Facebook posts by clinics. In hospitals, 16/1341 (1.19%) Facebook posts and 6/574 (1.0%) tweets and in clinics, 8/209 (3.8%) Facebook posts and 15/330 (4.5%) tweets could conflict medical advertising guidelines.
Fewer hospitals and clinics in Japan use social media as compared to other countries. Social media were mainly used for public relations. Some content disseminated by medical institutions could conflict with medical advertising guidelines. This study may serve as a reference for medical institutions to guide social media usage and may help improve medical website advertising in Japan.
在美国和西欧国家，医院使用社交媒体的现象已十分普遍。然而，在日本，医院和诊所使用社交媒体的程度尚不清楚。此外，最近修订的《医疗法》可能会对社交媒体内容进行监管。
本研究旨在调查日本医院和诊所使用社交媒体的情况。我们调查了社交媒体的采用情况，分析了社交媒体内容，并将内容与医疗广告指南进行了比较。
我们从厚生劳动省编制的医疗机构名单中随机抽取了300家医院和300家诊所。我们使用医院和诊所名称进行网络和社交媒体（Facebook和Twitter）搜索，以确定它们是否有社交媒体账户。我们收集了Facebook帖子和Twitter推文，并根据其内容进行分类（例如，健康促进、参加学术会议和发表论文、公关或新闻公告以及招聘）。我们将收集到的内容与医疗广告指南进行了比较。
我们发现，26.0%（78/300）的医院和7.7%（23/300）的诊所使用Facebook、Twitter或两者兼用。公关或新闻公告占医院Facebook帖子的53.99%（724/1341），占诊所Facebook帖子的58.4%（122/209）。在医院中，16/1341（1.19%）的Facebook帖子和6/574（1.0%）的推文，以及在诊所中，8/209（3.8%）的Facebook帖子和15/330（4.5%）的推文可能与医疗广告指南相冲突。
与其他国家相比，日本使用社交媒体的医院和诊所较少。社交媒体主要用于公关。医疗机构传播的一些内容可能与医疗广告指南相冲突。本研究可为医疗机构指导社交媒体使用提供参考，并可能有助于改善日本的医疗网站广告。
