Technical viability using social media: user reliability and misinformation

[mdhsieh]

One concern is the reliability of user posts on social media. It is unlikely that a normal user will post about diseases on a regular basis, for example weekly. You are more likely to get info from dedicated groups such as a city’s health organizations or groups on social media related to a certain medical condition, for example diabetes or cancer. Then you could more easily spot specific trends. There may be a limited number of such groups in a certain city, however.

Furthermore, misinformation is rampant on social media, and even news sites may make mistakes. For example, there may be a health scare on a measles outbreak which make it look like the disease is happening more often than it actually is. There may be a number of posts with stories or untrue statistics on local diseases. How will the web app deal with this misinformation? Will there be a way to filter the content even further?

[Tithi286]

One more issue is that, there may be a variety of drugs to treat a disease. How will the web app know which ones to recommend to the pharmacist? Will it recommend all the varieties? Will it only recommend drugs that the pharmacy normally stocks?