The SDG3 is ensuring good health and promoting the well-being for people at all ages. Social media analysis can be applied to address many problems like spreading information to the public and help achieve this goal. In this blog, I try to give some examples.
Fig.1. Social media and SDG3 [1]
Social media can help collect data and send information promptly
In my last blog, I mentioned that one of the trickiest problems when infectious disease broke out was cross-infection. If we could collect data of confirmed cases and send the information to the public in time, it will help a lot to avoid contacting with confirmed cases and reduce the risk of cross-infection. Figure2 shows the application used to find out if there are confirmed cases living in your housing estate through mobile-phone positioning. The data is collected by Health Committee and the technology is provided by Chinese company Tencent.
Fig.2. Application used to find out confirmed cases in your area [2]
Figure3 shows another application of social media used to find out if there are confirmed cases on your trip by entering your transportation, region, ride time, train number or flight number.
Fig.3. Application used to find out confirmed cases in your area [3]
Social media can help improve the efficiency of people visiting doctors and purchasing medical supplies
There are many popular social media applications in China Mainland. Among these apps, you must be familiar with WeChat and Alipay. They all have urban service functions which contains health-related functions such as doctor appointment and hospital department inquiry. We can choose the hospital nearby by mobile-phone positioning. Figure4 shows part of the services from WeChat and take Shenzhen city for example. These functions improve the efficiency of hospital work, simplified procedures for people to see a doctor and save time.
Fig.4. Doctor appointment service in WeChat [4]
WeChat Official Account is also a very popular social media application in China Mainland. During the outbreak of new pneumonia, many cities open their WeChat Official Account in order to provide medical mask appointment service for citizens. Figure5 presents the service in Xiamen city. Citizens in Xiamen can choose the nearest medical stores to purchase medical masks by making appointments. The service allows citizens to buy medical masks in batches and limits purchase of medical masks per person which can reduce the risk of infection, provide reasonable distribution of medical supplies and avoid waste.
Fig.5. Medical masks appointment in WeChat Official Account [5]
Social media can help popularize science and raise health awareness
With the rise of short video social media application like Tik Tok, short videos about medical knowledge recorded by medical experts and doctors have been viewed and reposted online. Compared SARS in 2003 with new pneumonia in 2020, people’s awareness of epidemic prevention has been greatly improved in 2020 thanks to the popular science short videos. Besides, through the content posted in short video social media application, I conclude that people pay more attention to their health and well-being by vaccination, doing exercise, regulating life schedule and so on.
Conclusion
Social media helps to get and send information about health from person to person in various kinds of ways, such as words, videos, pictures. People benefit a lot from social media applications in medical care and raising awareness of health and well-being.
References
[1]. Picture source:
http://img2.imgtn.bdimg.com/it/u=825642921,1209626963&fm=15&gp=0.jpghttps://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/health/
[2]. Picture and data source:
[3]. Picture and data source:
[4]. Picture source:
[5]. Picture source:
Lynne's Tree Hole 
Your article is too close to reality Hahahaha, especially when it comes to the appointment mask example, it is true that the combination of the Internet and modern medicine has achieved an unprecedented high degree of matching, but the article seems to be missing a little about the role of SMA in your chosen Goal. But your article is still very good and very practical.
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Thank you for your advice. Actually, I have realized this problem a couple days ago. I paid much attention to the social media applications and the influence they brought to the public. By the way, people using social media applications will inevitably leave data, such as the doctor appointment application mentioned in the blog. By analyzing the appointment information in each region, we can know which departments are the most popular. This will help us to make a decision in increasing the number of doctors in this department to satisfy citizens’ demand.
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I agree with you that we can use social media to spread health information to the public more efficiently. We can use big data technology to confirm whether we have close contact with confirmed disease cases. If we have suspect symptoms, we can use WeChat or Alipay to inquiry closest hospitals. In conclusion, social media can raise our health awareness.
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Thanks for your comment! Frankly, your comment gave a nice conclusion of my blog. Social media not only can help raise our awareness of health but also can help us get health care easier.
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I do agree with what you have mentioned in your post about how helpful is the social media like it can collect data and send information promptly, improve the efficiency of people visiting doctors and purchasing medical supplies as well as popularize science and raise health awareness. However, I think you have missed the part of how to implement the social media analytics to the issue of Health and how will it impact the issue of Health. In overall, I think you still did a great job in searching the functions of social media.
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Thanks for your appreciation and your advice. As you said, I have realized that I focused on searching the functions of social media in health and forgot to talk about the application of SMA. Actually, SMA can help a lot to health. For example, we can use the data of the search engine in the social media platform to understand what kind of health problems people are most concerned about, so as to improve the corresponding medical level and study countermeasures against such health problems.
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Your post is constructive and thorough. The topic that you have chosen is really convincible with current infectious disease. And I’ve learned a lot medical information from those different apps use to keep myself safe. And one little advice is that maybe more explanation on analytics process could be better.
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