Science software turns patients into 'active participants'

Science software can allow patients to become more actively involved in their medicinal treatment and general healthcare, according to database developer Gold Standard/Elsevier.

The developer of science software platforms for drug databases and decision support notes how IT is enabling healthcare information to be distributed to a wider audience.

Company president Marianne Messer says: "Consumers can rely on information from credible providers, with accurate content similar to that which is used by professionals."

However, social networking threatens to undermine the positive effects achieved through the online distribution of medical information.

Elsevier points out research published in the American Journal of Infection Control which found hundreds of misleading tweets about antibiotics on the micromessaging platform Twitter.

The potential audience for these inaccurate messages totalled millions of users, the researchers observed.

Conducted by Columbia University, New York, the study revealed 345 incidences of medicinal misunderstanding in 1,000 tweets containing the terms "flu" and "antibiotics" and 302 instances when searching for "antibiotics" with the term "cold".