Journal of Alzheimers Disease & Parkinsonism
Open Access

Abstract

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, affecting over 60 million people of all ages worldwide and is characterized by recurrent, unprovoked seizure activity. Despite the availability of numerous anti-epileptic drugs, up to 35% of the patients have medically refractory epilepsy. Like many other chronic diseases, in addition to the biological manifestations, the cognitive and psychosocial burdens of epilepsy are significant. The societal impact of epilepsy has been well-studied and documented in both print and other traditional media. For example, Steer et al. found a strong correlation between the prevalence of epilepsy and socioeconomic deprivation. Despite these findings, patients' disease experiences in addition to their desired care from the healthcare system vary greatly. Furthermore, epilepsy similarly remains a condition not well understood and subject to stigmatization by the general public Social media has become an instrumental part of the increasing number of people's lives worldwide. In 2016, Twitter reported over 313 million active users. Because of the growing patient presence on these sites, healthcare professionals are also more interested and involved in the adoption of social media to gain access to patients and for the delivery of personalized medicine. The number of published, peer-reviewed articles containing both the keywords “social media” and “quality of care,” as documented by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, increased from 139 in 2005 to 780 in 2015. Social media can be utilized for healthcare in a number of different ways, including information dissemination, peer-to-peer communication, research data collection, public opinion assessment, and knowledge generation . On one hand, the advantages of social media as a tool for healthcare include widespread usage, efficiency, and ability to collect real world information from users. On the other hand, the disadvantages of obtaining data from social media are the inconsistent quality of information obtained in addition to sampling, reporting, and recall bias. Our manuscript aims to assess how social media is used by online users interested in epilepsy and epilepsy-related topics to identify gaps in physician–patient communication and public understanding of specific topics and treatment interventions.

Biography