Facebook to now help to beat Breast Cancer  #hcsmeufr #esante #digitalhealth | eHealth mHealth HealthTech innovations - Marketing Santé innovant | Scoop.it
From www.journalgazette.net - January 13, 2020 8:21 AM

Social media bombards users with memes, cat videos and political squabbles. 

 

For thousands of women facing an aggressive form of breast cancer, Facebook recently brought another, less common offering: hope. 

 

“We were having a really, really difficult time finding patients,” said Casey Bales, project manager for triple-negative breast cancer research at the IU School of Medicine. 

 

She coordinates clinical trials – studies in which patients receive drugs or other treatments to try to understand their effects on health outcomes.

 

The breast cancer trial, begun in 2014, wasn't going well. Three years into the study, less than 40% of the patients needed were enrolled. 

 

“The trial was in jeopardy,” Bales said last week.

 

It was saved in 2017 when Facebook posts from the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer and IU researchers about a trial using genomics – the study of genes and their functions – to find weaknesses in cancer tumors appeared.

 

Indiana University researchers and the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer used the popular networking website and Instagram to recruit participants for a clinical trial. The first-of-its-kind social media effort jump-started a once-moribund effort that led to a Dec. 13 announcement that doctors say could save the lives of patients with triple-negative breast cancer. 

 

Recruiting through social media has become an important tool for physicians and medical researchers, who can sometimes have difficulty finding patients with specific forms of diseases they are trying to study. 

 


Via Plus91, Lionel Reichardt / le Pharmageek