Social media, particularly flexible platforms like Facebook, could be changing the way free medical information is circulated worldwide, according to three Johns Hopkins University researchers.

In an era where two-thirds of American adults get daily news from apps like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, educators should be cognizant of the rapidly evolving landscape of social media, Elliot K. Fishman, MD, and colleagues wrote in a Journal of the American College of Cardiology editorial—because it’s not just an external phenomenon. 

“Students and trainees, who represent the future of the medical profession, are heavily dependent on these platforms,” Fishman et al. wrote. “Medical educators interested in global outreach should master these tools to easily provide free medical education dissemination on an international scale.”

Fishman’s team analyzed CTisus.com, a website with a primary goal of educating the public about body CT imaging for free, to measure the impact social media can have on medical resources. CTisus has always been an online source—it launched in 1999—but for nearly a decade it’s been working to expand via social sites.

“Social media has been used since 2009 as the primary tool to build brand awareness, drive new users to the website and engage with the users,” the authors wrote of the brand. CTisus uses Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to push its content, though it might be most reliant on Facebook.

Facebook is unique in its flexibility, Fishman and co-authors said. It can support photo, video, live video and text while providing users with built-in post scheduling software and weekly analytics summaries.

“CTisus posts about 15 to 20 times a day to Facebook with a wide range of content: CT case studies, medical illustrations, pearls relevant to radiology, management tips and current articles relating to health and medicine,” the authors wrote. “In addition to the medical posts, CTisus also posts nonmedical content like music, pop culture, business and politics.”

The latter posts might not speak as much to the core of CTisus, Fishman et al. said, but it’s important to provide Facebook users with a wide variety of content to ensure the brand reaches its largest possible audience. There are two billion Facebook users across the globe, and they’re using the platform habitually for both personal and professional reasons.

Twitter’s 140- or 280-character-count “tweets” might not rival Facebook’s 60,000-character limit on text posts, but the authors  called the platform another “very powerful resource to disseminate medical information.” 

Twitter is perhaps most useful for its cut-to-the-chase nature,  the authors said, since users aren’t bogged down with text or other complexities. Hashtags are helpful for organization and targeting a particular audience, which can be critical in medical education.

Hashtags are also an essential part of Instagram, they said. CTisus uses the photo-heavy app to share what radiology knows best: imaging. The brand is also preparing to use Instagram’s story feature, which allows for the sharing of real-time images and short videos that disappear after 24 hours.

“CTisus hopes to build brand awareness with this tool by sharing their relationship and participation in the radiology community,” Fishman and co-authors said. “For CTisus, social media has proven invaluable in expanding outreach to achieve our mission of worldwide content distribution.”