Unleashing the true potential of social networks: confirming infliximab medical trials through Facebook posts

Online medical information prosumerism is supported by search engines, web sites, forums and social networks, all tools which provide a timely browsing of the big data of medical information. Reliable medical ecosystems require an assessment of such data, to control its quality from both clinical and patient standpoints. In addition, independent of its scientific accuracy, the full gamut of human experiences and emotions which are shared online in connection to a disease may provide important insights to both communities. Such opportunity may prove of particular interest to chronic disease communities, as chronic patients are expected to devote most of their medical enquiries around the same health topics; nonetheless, the resources that are available online for chronic patients are far from being fully exploited, as well as the behaviors adopted by chronic patients while interacting with such information. This paper sheds light on how a growing community of chronic patients, Crohn’s disease patients, employ such tools. The contribution of this work is twofold, as it provides implications for both the computer and medical science communities. In fact, this work performs both an original in-depth and comprehensive analysis, as it concentrates on the online debate concerning the use of a specific drug, Infliximab, by Crohn’s disease patients, specifically: (1) utilizing data mining and statistical methodologies to quantitatively assess trends in user posts, and (2) resorting to ethnographic methods to further understand the problems and concerns of patients. Interestingly, the qualitative approach not only corroborates the quantitative one, but also provides novel perspectives for medical research, regarding how Infliximab is administered and perceived by patients.