Endocrine Abstracts

Ongoing patient engagement and education are vital in establishing successful self-management, long-term glycaemic management and a complication-free future for people with diabetes. Today’s healthcare requires engaging the current generations where approximately 71% of adults go online everyday, and an additional 11% go online three to five times per week. One in three young people currently use social media in their daily lives. Social media has brought about a major change in societal communication and it offers huge potential as a versatile platform to deliver health interventions, recruitment to trials, collection of data and improving patient engagement within health care. However, key issues regarding ethical concerns -such as privacy, anonymity, informed consent and confidentiality remain an obstacle for healthcare professionals to engage in social media as a platform. Doctors now face a generation with social media and internet technology readily available, and online health care will soon become part of our clinical practice. It is therefore vital for health care professionals to be aware of the ethical guidelines on the use of social media and to work within the ethical principles within their regulatory bodies. The optimal and ethical use of innovative technologies and social media within a paediatric practice is shown to improve patient engagement and deliver effective education within the diabetes services.