Abstract
The advancement of the Internet and the social media has engaged the general public in their own healthcare more than ever. People actively seek health information online, form online patient communities to share experiences, and seek social support. Nevertheless, the limited health literacy of lay people makes it difficult for them to find the relevant health information, understand and reconcile conflicting findings. To improve health literacy and reduce the language barriers for lay people, it is important to understand the language and terminology gap between health professionals and consumers. eHealth literacy, which is defined as the ability to seek, find, understand, and appraise health information from electronic sources and apply the knowledge gained to addressing or solving a health problem, is an important factor of the gap. This chapter discusses eHealth literacy, its measurements, as well as methods and practice of harnessing social media to understand and bridge the terminology gap between professionals and consumers. This chapter also discusses future opportunities for developing health applications for consumers that are more adaptive to their health literacy level while preserving the accuracy of the information.
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He, Z. (2019). Understanding and Bridging the Language and Terminology Gap Between Health Professionals and Consumers Using Social Media. In: Bian, J., Guo, Y., He, Z., Hu, X. (eds) Social Web and Health Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14714-3_6
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