Ebola – Study Shows How Doctors Take to Twitter During Health Emergency

London UK, 3rd Oct, 2014: A new study using Creation Pinpoint has analysed how Ebola is being talked about by Doctors and other healthcare professionals in public social media platforms on a global scale. The study highlights how healthcare professionals (HCPs) are dissecting information and news relating to the virus and offering their own predictions as the outbreak develops. A Creation Pinpoint live feed of HCP conversations in social media about Ebola has been made available to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Creation Pinpoint is a monitoring tool developed by Creation Healthcare, which handpicks and analyses the public social media profiles and conversations of healthcare professionals. Conversation is taking place in all corners of the earth with the US, being ahead of the curve in terms of internet use among HCPs, having the most mentions of keywords relating to Ebola. There is no close second, the rest of the conversation is quite evenly distributed across the globe.

Popular conversation about Ebola among HCPs on Twitter can be split into three categories:

• Tweets announcing news about the virus; in particular, the story this week that the first case of Ebola has been reported in the USA was of particular interest to HCPs.
• Skeptical views about the arrival and/or testing or processing of a vaccine with interesting insights on opinions in different regions.
• Tweets expressing a positive view about possible new vaccines.

Daniel Ghinn, Creation Healthcare’s CEO said: “Our research into healthcare professionals’ views on Ebola proves that, as the World Health Organization has pointed out, this is not merely a crisis for West Africa but truly a public health emergency of international concern. By isolating the voice of healthcare professionals worldwide using Creation Pinpoint^®, we can see just how doctors and specialists value the views of their international peers when they are searching for new information in a health emergency”.

An analysis of the data gathered has been published by Creation Healthcare on its resource website HCPDOLS.com which will be updated weekly to assess how the conversation is developing and changing amongst healthcare professionals. The information will provide public health organizations, HCPs and others the ability to see unique insights into new ideas or concerns as the epidemic continues.

Ends.

Notes to Editors:  Chief Executive Officer Daniel Ghinn is available for expert comment on the new study. For more information please contact [email protected]. Images for use to support the story can be requested from the same email address.

Links:  The study analysis can be viewed at: http://pin.je/ebola

About Creation Healthcare:  Creation Healthcare is the research and training consultancy to the healthcare industry for the digital age, advising the world’s largest pharmaceutical and healthcare organisations. Established in 1998, the company has been at the forefront of innovation in healthcare engagement for sixteen years with a global consultant team spanning 20 countries.  Creation Healthcare’s headquarters are in London, United Kingdom.  www.creationhealthcare.com

About Creation Pinpoint^®: Launched in 2013, Creation Pinpoint^® is a unique social media monitoring tool that uses algorithms to analyse the conversations of over 110,000 healthcare professionals via their online social media pages.  Each individual is manually reviewed by Creation Healthcare’s Data Quality Team to ensure authenticity and to determine the role and location of the individual.

About HCPdols.com:  HCPdols.com brings together news and information aimed at the world’s healthcare digital opinion leaders. Articles are written by the team at Creation Healthcare.