Public Health Informatics: Twitter Review and Telemedicine Analysis

This report examines public health informatics, analyzing the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in healthcare management, access, and service delivery. It includes a review of three public health-related Twitter accounts over five weeks, highlighting how social media influences health information dissemination. The report discusses telemedicine, its advantages like convenience and improved access, and its barriers, such as cybersecurity concerns, licensing issues, and the digital divide. The analysis explores the ICT and management issues affecting telemedicine in Australia, including data considerations, interoperability, and organizational challenges. The report emphasizes the importance of addressing these barriers to improve healthcare delivery, especially in rural areas, and concludes that Twitter and telemedicine have the potential to improve public health awareness and healthcare services.

Running head: PUBLIC HEATH INFORMATICS
PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATICS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Discussion........................................................................................................................................2
Twitter review..............................................................................................................................3
Telemedicine................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
Reference.........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
The public health informatics refers to the application of informatics in the area of public
health involving surveillance, prevention and promotion of health. This assignment us dealing
with public informatics, it is analyzing the role of ICT in the management of public health,
healthcare access and delivering of services. This assignment is dealing with the uses of ICT
including mHealth, eHealth and the different strategies of the social media for health. The
assignment will describe the reviews from different twitter accounts from week 1 to week 5 and
it is also dealing with the barriers of telemedicine in Australia because of which the healthcare
services are effected.
Discussion
The whole health industry is very much dependent on the social media, starting from the
clinical healthcare programs to the public health campaigns in order to support, promote and
spread the information and data for improving both the personal and the community healthcare
services. The social media had provided he human beings the to share the different preventive
measures and also help human to create support to track the personal health and support in the
creation of the patient to patient after the diagnoses is over (Attai et al., 2017). The social media
help the patients to learn a lot of things regarding the different healthcare policies and different
healthcare programs. There are many social media which allow the people to get accustomed
with the different public health programs but among them ‘twitter’ allows people with different
public health related accounts which helps people to become more conscious about health (Lee et
al., 2015)

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Twitter review
Twitter is an online network of social media which offers a new way to track and
maintain the management of the public health risks. The twitter helps the users to make new
friends and also keep the friendship with each other and also with the family members and with
the co-workers. This is possible by sending short messages through computers or mobile phones
(Logghe et al., 2016). The twitter account also helps to detect the location of the user and also
helps in tracking the major details (Thompson et al., 2015). Apart from providing the
information regarding the health related programs the twitter also helps in providing information
about events like earthquakes and typhoons, etc. So many accounts are there which provide
information about public related programs but among them only a few accounts are there whose
news feed provide us with several helpful information regarding the different public health
programs (Pemmaraju et al, 2017). Some of the useful accounts are @telemedicinme,
@equitylist and @TheMarmotReview. @TheMarmotReview is one of the account which collect
recent information about the recent public health services. According to one of the post within
this five week, a program has been described which makes information about the intellectual
disability. People suffering from these difficulties suffer from issues like malfunction in
communication which serves as the barrier in accessing and participating in healthcare. The
project was set by 3DN UNSW. The project aimed in communicating with the family members
of the patient order to find their health journey and to teach them the type of the resources
required to develop the knowledge about the intellectual disability. @telemedicine is one of the
important journal which keeps different news and the updated information about all new research
works and published research papers. According to one of the post of the telemedicine journal
had posted about publishing of a new research paper about the effect of telephones. The name of

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the article is “Effect of telephones- Delivered interventions on glycemic control in type II
diabetes treated with Glargine insulin. The paper deals with the fact that telephonic delivered
intervention provide help and support in the self-management of diabetes so that a person can
control the diabetes and also improve the diabetes control. eStar program is one of the telephone
support platform for the people suffering from type II diabetes on Glargine insulin treatment.
People were found to recover after they received the treatment. @equitylist is another important
twitter account which keeps valuable information about the public health awareness programs.
One of the post in the last 5 weeks, one post was found about the urinary tract infection. The post
was that ‘urinary tract infections affect millions’. This infection has become one of the major
health issues of most of the people of the world not people are not aware about the disease. For
those people who spend most of the time on social media, this feed will obviously help in
knowing much more about the disease. The article is dealing with the fact that urinary tract
infection has become resistant to most of the medicines that were used previously in order to
cure the patient. Those medicines no longer act as the ailment of the disease. The article made
people know about the medicines which no longer are able to cure the disease and also helped
people know about the medicines which are now bake to cure urinary tract infections. Another
post of @equilist in the last 5 weeks has dealt with the primary healthcare model. Primary
healthcare model is one of the approach to provide primary care to the patients. The more the
investment on the primary care the less is the healthcare costs and the condition of the primary
health also improves. The model has articulated different definition of the primary health through
a defined structure involving the detailed structure on the overall cost on spending on services.
Another post was found on this account within the last five weeks about the geological factors
and its relation with the public health. The article is dealing with the fact that mental health of

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human beings are affected by the manmade and natural disaster. Those people who suffer from
the disasters have chances to acquire several infectious diseases and as a result the mental health
of the patients are also effected. People must be aware about maintaining equity between the
mental and physical illness.
From all the feeds it can be said that twitter no doubt acts as the fey effective social
media in making people update about all the different heath benefit activities and health related
programs. Nowadays people are not much aware about public awareness programs and health
related activities. They are even not much aware about the recent research activities and also
about the new inventions going on daily (Dueñas et al., 2016). So many researches are going on
but the common people are unaware about those inventions. If people follow all these accounts
from twitter, then they will be updated about the public related programs (Rayner et al., 2016).
Twitter is thus helping a lot on the management and the surveillance of the different healthcare
related programs. From all of the above mentioned feeds of twitter accounts it can be said that as
a social media tool twitter had helped people to become aware about the public healthcare
programs and in future also it will do the same.
Telemedicine
The term telemedicine refers to the remote delivery of the different healthcare services
like certain assessments health or certain urgent consultations from the doctors over the
infrastructure if telecommunication. It helps the providers of the healthcare to do the evaluation,
diagnose and the treatment of the patients by taking the help from technology like smart phones
or video callings (Ghani, Jaber & Suryana, 2015). There are so many advantages of using
telecommunication like convenience where patients do not have look for an appointment, the
patient do not gave to travel and visit the doctor. Another advantage of the telecommunication is

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the improved access. The patient in the rural areas can get the opportunities of special services
like access of the mental health treatment and post-surgery follow up. Apart from having such
advantages, the disadvantages of the telecommunication are matter of great concern (Poulsen et
al., 2015). The disadvantages or the barriers of the telecommunication hamper a lot in delivering
the care process through telecommunication. Cyber-security is one of the important barrier as the
data which are transmitted by the telecommunication are susceptible to the hackers. The
criminals and terrorists often keep the healthcare organizations as their targets. The second
barrier is that the doctors sometimes are not able to prescribe medicines to the patients. Another
barrier is that he service providers are often not aware about the ways to use the equipment of
telemedicine. Licensing issue is also another as not all the states of a country are not accessible
with the telemedicine approaches. Apart from all these one of the major barrier of the
telecommunication is the availability of the internet connections. Many of the telecommunication
approaches are not available in the remote areas because of the lack of proper facilities of
internet. Many of the patients suffer and even in acute conditions, it may even lead to the death
of the person. The issues of can be classified into the ICT issues and the management issues
(Scott et al., 2018). Among the ICT issues the matter which needs to be considered are them data
consideration and the interoperability. Data consideration involves understanding each other in
the systems. The issues lie in the representation and structure of the data (Bagot et al., 2016). The
information about how the hoe the data are defined, structured and represented is known as the
metadata. The metadata endorsed for use in Australia are known as data standards. These
standards are made for the purpose of improving the relevancy, quality, consistency and
availability of information about health and welfare of the people of Australia. If the data
standards are not collected properly, then it will hamper the representation of the information

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also. The metadata online registry is the repository of Australia in the sectors of health, housing
assistance, community services, early childhood and homelessness. So the representation of the
metadata must be done correctly otherwise it will hamper the process of telemedicine (Grossman
& Goldstone, 2015).
Interoperability is ability to receive and send data among the network which are
continuously interconnected with each other provide that the quality standards are maintained
both by the provider of the information and the receiver of the information (Cardoso et al, 2018).
The advantages of the interoperability includes that it can select the best equipment available
from different manufacturers which are based on the best performances and prices. So if any
problem arises regarding the interoperability the telemedicine policies will also get hampered
(Detro et al., 2016)
The management issue lie in the management of the organization who are involved in
providing the information and those who receive the healthcare through the telecommunication
systems. Sometimes it may happen that the patients are not getting the specific treatment desired
by the patient. The healthcare provider also sometimes are not able to understand about the exact
treatments that the patients are wanting (Wilson & Maeder, 2015). In these type of instances, the
issue lie on the management of the organization or the management of the patient. May be the
care providers or the patients do not know the ways how to operate the telecommunication
devices. Unable to use the devices lead them into great troubles. Another issue is the improper
internet connection in the rural areas. Suppose at the time when the doctor is in a video call with
the patient, the improper internet connection will hamper the video call.
Presently many of the rural areas have proper internet connections however in the few
weeks ago, the internet facilities were not available much. Still much improvements are needed

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in many of the rural areas so that in future the people of the rural area do not have to suffer much
an will get required medical assistance at appropriate times (Fang et al., 2018)..
Conclusion
The assignment is about public health informatics, the role the social media and
telemedicine plays in the public health informatics. Among all the social media, the twitter has
been found to be the most effective one as most of the people worldwide are familier with his
media. The health promotion accounts of the twitter makes people aware about the present health
promotion activities and also about the recent research activities. The telemedicine activity help
the people residing in the rural areas to get healthcare and medicinal services at urgent
conditions. However the telemedicine activity face many barriers, it is trying to cope up with the
barriers and hope in future it will be able to overcome all the barriers.

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