The number of patients using social media and the number of applications and solutions used by medical professionals online have been sky-rocketing in the past few years, therefore the rational behind creating a well-designed, clear and tight handbook of practical examples and case studies with simple pieces of suggestions about different social media platforms is evident. While the number of e-patients is rising, the number of web-savvy doctors who can meet the expectations of these new generations of patients is not, this huge gap can only be closed by providing medical professionals with easily implementable, useful and primarily practical pieces of advice and suggestions about how they should use these tools or at least what they should know about these, so then when an e-patient has an internet-related question, they will know how to respond properly. As all medical professionals regardless of their medical specialties will meet e-patients, this issue with growing importance will affect every medical professionals which means there is a huge need for such a easily understandable handbook.?
Bertalan Mesko, MD, PhD is a medical futurist who graduated from the University of Debrecen with Weszprémy Award as a medical doctor in 2009 and finished PhD in the field of clinical genomics with summa cum laude. He is the managing director of Webicina.com, the first service that curates the medical and health-related social media resources for patients and medical professionals. He has given over 300 presentations from the Yale, Stanford and Harvard University to the centre of the World Health Organization and the Futuremed course organized by the Singularity University at NASA. He is the author of the multiple award-winning medical blog, Scienceroll.com; and the lecturer of the Social Media in Medicine online and offline university course.
