More Than 75K Health Care Professionals Use Twitter

More than 75,000 health care professionals worldwide use Twitter to post information about health care policy, research, medications and disease treatment, according to new research from London-based Creation Healthcare, FierceHealthcare reports.

According to the report, just 23 health care professionals signed up for Twitter when the social media site launched in 2006, but use grew by more than 500%, reaching 27,000 health care professionals by 2008.

Health care professionals across the globe now post about 152,000 tweets per day. In total, about 208 million tweets by health care professionals have been posted since the site's launch (MacDonald, FierceHealthcare, 4/22).

According to the research, the U.S. has the largest percentage of health care professionals on Twitter, at 31%, followed by the United Kingdom, at 9% (Tyer, PM Live, 4/22).

According to the study, U.S. health care professionals using Twitter primarily are:

  • Health care consultants;
  • Nurses;
  • Pharmacists; and
  • Physicians (FierceHealthcare, 4/22).
Source: iHealthBeat, Wednesday, April 23, 2014