Information passing in healthcare social networks

Abstract

In recent years, social networks have become one of the most influential developments in our lives. In this paper, we investigate trust relationships and information passing in online social networks that focus on health. Our results are based on a social network called doktorsitesi.com which is the one of the largest online social networks in Turkey about healthcare that is managed by professionals. We show that there is a connection among patients in terms of information passing in doktorlarsitesi.com and quantify this information passing. Our findings implicate that healthcare interactions are embedded in social networks, and the results on the existence of information passing on other types of e-commerce social networks also apply to healthcare social networks.