A cardiovascular patient follow-up system using Twitter and HL7

This project aimed at designing and developing a system for following-up cardiovascular patients integrating a social media (Twitter) and a healthcare communications standard (HL7 v2.x). Two applications - an android-based tool for gathering and tweeting vital cardiovascular signs and a Java-based desktop tool for receiving and parsing the information - were created within the framework of this project. The two applications developed provided a feasible prototype for following-up cardiovascular patients. A number of considerations concerning this novel approach are discussed in this paper. The modification of the health care flow empowers the patient and enhances the patient-physician communication. On the other hand, both patients and physicians may be reluctant to use the system as a daily basis due to security and privacy concerns. In any case, using a healthcare standard such as HL7 assures an extra layer of interoperability and makes the integration with existing information systems easier. The use of healthcare standards in conjunction with social media provides user-friendly applications that help bridge the gap in the patient-physician communication in a standard-compliant fashion. However, some research questions are still open and further projects are needed to guarantee the secure use of social media in healthcare.