Social media in urology: Opportunities, applications, appropriate use and new horizons

Abstract

Introduction Social Media (SoMe) includes a broad spectrum of public use platforms like Twitter, YouTube or Facebook that have changed the way humans interact and communicate. Considering the high usage rates for various SoMe platforms among urologists, we aimed to perform a review regarding opportunities, applications, appropriate use and new horizons of SoMe in urology. Material and methods Literature review. Results We are currently experiencing an explosion in the use of SoMe in healthcare and urology due to the clear offer of advantages in communication, information sharing, enhanced experience of meetings and conferences, as well as, for networking. However, SoMe is an open environment and recommendations should be implemented on the appropriate use in order to respect ethical considerations and not break the harmony of the doctor-patient relationship. SoMe activity has become an important part of our participation in scientific meetings. Conclusions SoMe represents a vibrant area of opportunities for the communication of knowledge in health care and so their potential applications today are unquestionable; however, its development in the urological community is still in its infancy. At present the benefits include communication between associations, urologists, residents, other health care professionals and patients. Further efforts are focusing on standardizing the language used through SoMe and finding out how we can objectively quantify the impact of the information published in SoMe.