Twitter and Health Science Research

Twitter is a communication platform that can be used to conduct health science research, but a full understanding of its use remains unclear. The purpose of this narrative literature review was to examine how Twitter is currently being used to conduct research in the health sciences and to consider how it might be used in the future. A time-limited search of the health-related research was conducted, which resulted in 31 peer-reviewed articles for review. Information relating to how Twitter is being used to conduct research was extracted and categorized, and an explanatory narrative was developed. To date, Twitter is largely being used to conduct large-scale studies, but this research is complicated by challenges relating to collecting and analyzing big data. Conversely, the use of Twitter to conduct small-scale investigations appears to be relatively unexplored.