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Today's blog post is a guest post from Kiala from Staffing Robot. We are very appreciative of her for taking the time to send us a guest post.

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We’re all guilty of it: googling our symptoms to decide whether we should call the coroner or not. And I’m certain we’ve all had the similar exam room experience of mumbling  “Well WebMD said it was probably cancer.....or a skin rash” while your physician calmly took your cyberchondria in stride and went about their job of correctly diagnosing you.

Obviously, this is the dark side of the internet in regards to health information. Fortunately, as the healthcare field begins to take a proactive role in the world of social media and internet medicine, a solution is taking shape.

Medical Field Ready to Embrace the Internet

Today, more and more members of the medical profession are utilizing social media for sharing helpful medical information and providing patient care - but with a high degree of caution.

From Digital Trends:

“I see Twitter as a higher-risk environment, as it’s basically an open forum.”

Thomas Lee, M.D. of the Orthopedic Foot & Ankle Center in Westerville, Ohio raises a valid point: Social media is a difficult media for a physician because of HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. “It is very difficult to talk about medical care without personalizing the content, and you can’t personalize content without violating HIPAA...without the opportunity to directly talk to a patient and examine them, our ability to be accurate is significantly mitigated.”
Medicine itself is all about relationships. If you have good relationships with your health care providers, it helps you get better care. In good relationships, both sides listen more and tell more. When you trust someone, you are more likely to follow their advice. By finding ways for providers and patients to have conversations on social media, we could strengthen and support those relationships. This is a new frontier for us, and we'll need to be thoughtful about how we do it, but if we can face transplants and cure leukemia, I think we can figure out a way for doctors and patients to be together on social media.