Stanford Medicine X and Symplur announce social media analytics research challenge

Stanford Medicine X and Symplur are pleased to announce a joint initiative designed to spark scholarly research activity in healthcare social media. The Stanford Medicine X | Symplur Signals Research Challenge seeks to engage all healthcare stakeholders in healthcare social media research.

Why ask questions about healthcare social media?

Social media use in healthcare and medicine has transformed how stakeholders discuss problems and innovate solutions. Who benefits from social media engagement in medicine? To what extent does it help form communities of practice, help patients feel less isolated, and unite caregivers and researchers in the common goal to improve health and cure disease? How might social media be used for medical education? What risks to patient privacy and healthcare might social media use impose? Who, if any, are being left out of these conversations? These are just a few important questions social media analytics might help elucidate.

What is Symplur Signals?

Symplur Signals is a set of user-obvious social media analytics tools that helps researchers uncover trends and glean insights from large amounts of social media data tracked over time. It is a platform that aims to bring powerful insights about healthcare social media to all researchers and healthcare stakeholders.

What is the Stanford Medicine X | Symplur Signals Research Challenge?

The idea is simple, use Symplur Signals to address one of three questions. If selected, you will go on to research, analyze, and report on your findings with the hopes of presenting to the Medicine X community in September. The possibilities, however, are endless.

We know the Medicine X community is one of the most diverse in all of healthcare, and that’s why this challenge is open to all stakeholders: students, patients, caregivers, physicians, researchers, technologists – everyone.

If you want to truly understand the makeup of a healthcare community, this is your chance. If you are a physician in pursuit of the conversations that genuinely matter among patients, this is your chance. If you think the medical education community could learn from the online patient community, this is your chance.

What are the incentives and prizes?

The winning submission will receive, among other rewards:

• An opportunity to present their research on the main stage of Medicine X | Ed or Medicine X | Stanford
• PLoS ONE submission of their work with publication fees covered by Stanford Medicine X.
• Access to Symplur Signals research platform for 1 year

All of the details of the Stanford Medicine X | Symplur Signals Research Challenge, including the application, can be found at https://medicinex.stanford.edu/medx-symplur-2015/