Patients’ Twitter Network of messages give useful insights into NHS hospital care

Dr Felix Greaves has very generously provided the Twitter data for this visualisation. The initial batch of data contained 149,000 nnodes (approx). I was then able to isolate  a core of 12,000 Nodes (approx) using Pajek and then able to create the image using Gephi.

The study, published in the journal BMJ Quality and Safety, looked at 200,000 tweets sent to NHS hospitals over one year. Around 11 per cent gave information about patients’ experiences, which could offer a route for hospitals to understand how well they are caring for their patients.

The researchers found that 75 of 166 NHS hospital trusts were on Twitter. On average, each hospital on Twitter received 2600 tweets a year.

by Francesca Davenport

 

Reference: Greaves et al. ‘Tweets about hospital quality: a mixed methods study’ British Medical Journal of Quality and Safety (2014) doi:10.1136/bmjqs-2