Social Media Use for Health Reasons among Health Information Management and Technology Graduates from Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University

摘要

The aim of this study is to investigate the social media usage for health reasons among Department of Health Information Management and Technology (HIMT)graduates. A cross-sectional web-based survey was conducted with 267 HIMT graduates. The survey contains questions in a multiple-choice format. The data analyses were conducted by employing a basic descriptive data based on frequencies and proportions.125 HIMT graduates responded to the survey of this study. 72.4% are employees, and almost half of them are married. The respondents were working in different areas: health informatics (37%), quality and improvement (25.5%), information and technology (16.8%), research (9.2%), instruction (5.9%), and other areas of the field (5.9%). More than half of the participants considered that the healthcare organizations that use social media make easier the communication between physicians and patients. Similarly, the majority of HIMT graduates have searched for online information about their current health status, dieting or physical fitness topics, and preferred to use social sites in case of medical emergencies. Also, more than a half of the participants believed that the information posted on media sites is educational, important and reliable.