Abstract
Social media is playing a critical role in the dissemination of health information, and anecdotal evidence suggests it is influencing the perceptions of healthcare providers. To understand the influence of social media on healthcare providers' clinical decisions, we examine the influence of Twitter discourse regarding Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for treating COVID-19 patients on the proportion of HCQ prescriptions prescribed for COVID-19 patients in the USA in 2020. We collected Twitter data from Twitter API v2 and HCQ prescriptions in the USA from Symphony Health data on the COVID-19 research database. Econometric analysis of our data indicates that Twitter discourse has a positive influence on the HCQ prescriptions prescribed in the USA in 2020. Our results are robust to time-invariant location-specific metrics. We discuss the possible pathways through which Twitter could have influenced healthcare providers' prescribing decisions.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 57th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2024 |
| Editors | Tung X. Bui |
| Publisher | IEEE Computer Society |
| Pages | 3867-3876 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9780998133171 |
| State | Published - 2024 |
| Event | 57th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2024 - Honolulu, United States Duration: Jan 3 2024 → Jan 6 2024 |
Publication series
| Name | Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences |
|---|---|
| ISSN (Print) | 1530-1605 |
Conference
| Conference | 57th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2024 |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | United States |
| City | Honolulu |
| Period | 1/3/24 → 1/6/24 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
Keywords
- COVID-19
- Healthcare provider
- Hydroxychloroquine
- Social media