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Evaluating the predictability of medical conditions from social media posts

PLoS ONE, ISSN: 1932-6203, Vol: 14, Issue: 6, Page: e0215476
2019
  • 57
    Citations
  • 0
    Usage
  • 185
    Captures
  • 37
    Mentions
  • 518
    Social Media
Metric Options:   Counts1 Year3 Year

Metrics Details

  • Citations
    57
  • Captures
    185
  • Mentions
    37
    • News Mentions
      37
      • News
        37
  • Social Media
    518
    • Shares, Likes & Comments
      518
      • Facebook
        518

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Article Description

We studied whether medical conditions across 21 broad categories were predictable from social media content across approximately 20 million words written by 999 consenting patients. Facebook language significantly improved upon the prediction accuracy of demographic variables for 18 of the 21 disease categories; it was particularly effective at predicting diabetes and mental health conditions including anxiety, depression and psychoses. Social media data are a quantifiable link into the otherwise elusive daily lives of patients, providing an avenue for study and assessment of behavioral and environmental disease risk factors. Analogous to the genome, social media data linked to medical diagnoses can be banked with patients’ consent, and an encoding of social media language can be used as markers of disease risk, serve as a screening tool, and elucidate disease epidemiology. In what we believe to be the first report linking electronic medical record data with social media data from consenting patients, we identified that patients’ Facebook status updates can predict many health conditions, suggesting opportunities to use social media data to determine disease onset or exacerbation and to conduct social media-based health interventions.

Bibliographic Details

Raina M. Merchant; David A. Asch; Patrick Crutchley; Lyle H. Ungar; Sharath C. Guntuku; Johannes C. Eichstaedt; Shawndra Hill; Kevin Padrez; Robert J. Smith; H. Andrew Schwartz; Sreeram V. Ramagopalan

Public Library of Science (PLoS)

Multidisciplinary

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