Are health-related tweets evidence based? review and analysis of health-related tweets on Twitter

Background: health care professionals are utilizing twitter to communicate,develop disease surveillance systems,and mine health-related information. the immediate users of this health information is the general public,including patients. this necessitates the validation of health-related tweets by health care professionals to ensure they are evidence based and to avoid the use of noncredible information as a basis for critical decisions. objective: the aim of this study was to evaluate health-related tweets on twitter for validity (evidence based) and to create awareness in the community regarding the importance of evidence-based health-related tweets. methods: all tweets containing health-related information in the arabic language posted april 1-5,2015,were mined from twitter. the tweets were classified based on popularity,activity,interaction,and frequency to obtain 25 twitter accounts (8 physician accounts,10 nonofficial health institute accounts,4 dietitian accounts,and 3 government institute accounts) and 625 tweets. these tweets were evaluated by 3 american board-certified medical consultants and a score was generated (true/false) and interobserver agreement was calculated. results: a total of 625 health-related arabic-language tweets were identified from 8 physician accounts,10 nonofficial health institute accounts,4 dietician accounts,and 3 government institute accounts. the reviewers labeled 320 (51.2%) tweets as false and 305 (48.8%) tweets as true. comparative analysis of tweets by account type showed 60 of 75 (80%) tweets by government institutes,124 of 201 (61.7%) tweets by physicians,and 42 of 101 (41.6%) tweets by dieticians were true. the interobserver agreement was moderate (range 0.78-0.22). more than half of the health-related tweets (169/248,68.1%) from nonofficial health institutes and dietician accounts (59/101,58.4%) were false. tweets by the physicians were more likely to be rated true compared to other groups (p<.001). conclusions: approximately half of the medical tweets from professional accounts on twitter were found to be false based on expert review. furthermore,most of the evidence-based health-related tweets are posted by government institutes and physicians. © khalid a alnemer,waleed m alhuzaim,ahmed a alnemer,bader b alharbi,abdulrahman s bawazir,omar r barayyan,faisal k balaraj.