James G. Kim*, Biomedical Knowledge Engineering Laboratory, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, Republic Of Sungin Lee, Biomedical Knowledge Engineering Laboratory, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, Republic Of Seungbeom Kim*, General Doctor, Seoul, Korea, Republic Of Hyejin Jeong, General Doctor, Seoul, Korea, Republic Of Suik Lee, General Doctor, Seoul, Korea, Republic Of Hong-gee Kim, Biomedical Knowledge Engineering Laboratory, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, Republic Of Track: Practice Presentation Topic: Web 2.0 approaches for clinical practice, clinical research, quality monitoring Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: LKSC Conference Center Stanford Room: Lower Lobby Date: 2011-09-18 12:00 PM – 01:00 PM Last modified: 2011-08-12

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The biopsychosocial model is a model that suggests that not only biological factors but also psychosocial factors in a patient's everyday life can potentially influence health outcomes. Yet, physicians cannot effectively capture a holistic understanding of the patient with a few short-time consultations and there have never been enough tools to grab it so far. Especially when physicians face the widest spectrum of diseases, ages, and socioeconomic backgrounds (i.e. in primary care settings), it's more cumbersome to get a comprehensive view of the patient. Moreover, if the patient does not exhibit any serious symptoms, the cost of in-hospital observation may not be affordable to him/her, and various life events that may cause recurrent symptoms cannot be easily distinguished by the patient's own efforts. To mitigate these issues, we have been attempting to use social media such as me2day — a Korean microblogging service — in our clinical practice. Social media, with its increasing popularity, can offer opportune exchanges of important data between the physician and the patient. The information flow, however, between them in social media is primarily unidirectional — the physician being the provider, and the patient the beneficiary. Our approach is an attempt to engage patients in a more bidirectional way, with relationships and mutual agreement between the two parties as the core foundation on which the technical benefits of social media are to be utilized. In doing so, we have gleaned patients' life data from the social media, and the way that data can be harnessed to support patients' health behavior change is discussed, built, and pursued. This attempt can turn 5-minute consultations into an ongoing communication, through which patients' potential information and physicians' support are continually available. The agreement process in our practice is twofold: 1) social media use agreement, where the patient consents to use a designated social media service; and 2) the agreement on the use of a personalized tag set. The second agreement process involves a one-time face-to-face consultation, and during this consultation, a set of pertinent and aggravating lifestyle factors — such as alcohol drinking, overwork, etc. — are extracted and converted into a collection of ‘agreed-upon’ tags. These tags are used in communication between the patient and the physicians in social media messages, whenever an identified factor has emerged in her life. All tagged messages are used in encounters with the patient, in order to strengthen his/her commitment and willingness to make lifestyle changes, or to support the physicians in confirming his/her diagnosis. Exploration and accommodation of patients' views into clinical practice is an important factor, which enables rapport building and appreciation. Use of social media, especially the mutually agreed-upon tags, in a few of our cases has shown that this approach has a great potential to identify patients' hidden and personal health risks in daily life. We believe this approach helps physicians employ a wider lens into the needs of patients, which can subsequently improve quality of care and empower patients.