The Twitter Adventure of #MyHealthRecord: An Analysis of Different User Groups During the Opt-Out Period.

My Health Record (MHR), which is an online health summary for Australians, was changed from the opt-in to the opt-out model, and therefore sparked a vast discussion on Twitter. In order to understand the debate, the information dissemination and the levels of engagement, we have analysed tweets posted from July 2018 to February 2019. In this paper, we report on the findings of the patterns of discussion, the hashtags and the numbers of retweets and likes from different user categories. The results show that the discussion was highly political, and the tweets from the MHR official accounts had lower propagation and engagement than other user groups. This work highlights the implications of using social networking sites (SNSs) to promote large-scale mandatory electronic health record systems.

[1]  Karin M. Verspoor,et al.  Designing Health Websites Based on Users’ Web-Based Information-Seeking Behaviors: A Mixed-Method Observational Study , 2016, Journal of medical Internet research.

[2]  Pouria Amirian,et al.  Ebola and Twitter. What Insights Can Global Health Draw from Social Media , 2017 .

[3]  Kalina Bontcheva,et al.  Classifying Twitter favorites: Like, bookmark, or Thanks? , 2016, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[4]  Mark Dredze,et al.  What Are Health-Related Users Tweeting? A Qualitative Content Analysis of Health-Related Users and Their Messages on Twitter , 2014, Journal of medical Internet research.

[5]  A. Coomarasamy,et al.  Online Health Seeking Behaviours: What Information Is Sought by Women Experiencing Miscarriage? , 2018, Studies in health technology and informatics.

[6]  Heng Xu,et al.  Individuals’ Attitudes Towards Electronic Health Records: A Privacy Calculus Perspective , 2016 .

[7]  Karin M. Verspoor,et al.  The Use of Web-Based Technologies in Health Research Participation: Qualitative Study of Consumer and Researcher Experiences , 2018, Journal of medical Internet research.

[8]  Karin M. Verspoor,et al.  Innovation in Designing Health Information Websites: Results from a Quantitative Study , 2016, PACIS.

[9]  G. Eysenbach,et al.  Pandemics in the Age of Twitter: Content Analysis of Tweets during the 2009 H1N1 Outbreak , 2010, PloS one.

[10]  Jun Tian,et al.  Characterizing information propagation patterns in emergencies: A case study with Yiliang Earthquake , 2018, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[11]  V. Braun,et al.  Using thematic analysis in psychology , 2006 .

[12]  Ben Kraal,et al.  A content analysis of the consumer-facing online information about My Health Record: Implications for increasing knowledge and awareness to facilitate uptake and use , 2018, Health information management : journal of the Health Information Management Association of Australia.

[13]  Shanton Chang,et al.  Engaging Consumers with Musculoskeletal Conditions in Health Research: A User-Centred Perspective , 2017, HIC.