Institute for Studies on the Mediterranean, National Research Council of Italy (CNR ISMed), 80132 Napoli, Italy.
Department of Movement and Wellness Sciences, Parthenope University of Naples, 80132 Napoli, Italy.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Jul 8;18(14):7295. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18147295.
The application of social networks in the health domain has become increasingly prevalent. They are web-based technologies which bring together a group of people and health-care providers having in common health-related interests, who share text, image, video and audio contents and interact with each other. This explains the increasing amount of attention paid to this topic by researchers who have investigated a variety of issues dealing with the specific applications in the health-care industry. The aim of this study is to systematize this fragmented body of literature, and provide a comprehensive and multi-level overview of the studies that has been carried out to date on social network uses in healthcare, taking into account the great level of diversity that characterizes this industry. To this end, we conduct a scoping review enabling to identify the major research streams, whose aggregate knowledge are discussed according to three levels of analysis that reflect the viewpoints of the major actors using social networks for health-care purposes, i.e., governments, health-care providers (including health-care organizations and professionals) and social networks' users (including ill patients and general public). We conclude by proposing directions for future research.
社交网络在健康领域的应用已经变得越来越普遍。它们是基于网络的技术，将一群具有共同健康相关利益的人以及医疗保健提供者聚集在一起，分享文本、图像、视频和音频内容，并相互交流。这解释了研究人员对这个主题的关注程度越来越高，他们研究了各种与医疗保健行业的具体应用相关的问题。本研究的目的是将这个零散的文献体系化，并提供一个全面和多层次的综述，总结迄今为止在医疗保健中使用社交网络的研究，同时考虑到这个行业的高度多样性。为此，我们进行了范围界定审查，以确定主要的研究流，根据三个分析层次来讨论其综合知识，这些层次反映了出于医疗保健目的使用社交网络的主要参与者（即政府、医疗保健提供者（包括医疗机构和专业人员）和社交网络用户（包括患病患者和一般公众））的观点。最后，我们提出了未来研究的方向。
