What Twitter teaches us about patient-provider communication on pain.

The objective of this study was to understand how pain patients and health care providers (HCPs) are engaging on Twitter and what insights this engagement might provide. By identifying how information is spread by and between these audiences, organizations such as patient advocacy groups may be better poised to develop and share materials that facilitate online communication between HCPs and pain patients, with an end goal of improving a shared decision-making process around pain management. We analyzed the Twitter audiences most engaged on pain topics by conducting a Social Network Analysis (SNA) of a large network of connected users on Twitter.