Survey - How Doctors in India Use Social Media

This research was done by students of TAPMI interning at echoVME – Digital Marketing
Agency under the guidance of Team echoVME. Many thanks to Anubandh and Ravi Teja from T.
A Pai Management Institute (TAPMI) for helping us complete this.

Key Indications from the Survey Done for Doctors:

The gender comparison: Female doctors used social media more for their personal purposes
than their male counterparts. Though on an average, they spent less time on it- the difference in
the average time between males and females was more than 15 minutes. However, they were
more active in updating academic content and joining online forums.

Fresh and experienced doctors: It was easy for us to approach the fresh doctors or doctors with
less experience to respond to this data than the senior doctors as the doctors with lesser
experience had wider presence on Social Media or showed immense interest in the survey.

Social Media use: Channels which were most actively used by doctors were Facebook and
WhatsApp, followed by Youtube, Twitter and LinkedIn. Facebook and Whatsapp were more
popular amongst the doctors as majority of doctors use Social Media for their personal usage.
However, we recommend doctors in India to be more active on LinkedIn as it is a great way to
make international professional contacts and attain thought leadership landmark on the global
map.

Doctor-patient interaction: When people across the globe look for a place to get medical
treatment, they research on the web to find out the medical facilities. best suitable for their needs.
They will only be aware of medical facilities in India, once there is sufficient and validated
content on the internet. LinkedIn can perform as an important tool in this regards. It is a very
strong interface to develop thought leadership and have professional interactions and debates.

Academic interaction: Not only connecting with patients, but social media play an important
role in developing thought leadership and becoming the host to medical debates and discussion
amongst the doctors, professors and people of high academics.

Social Media & misleading content: 94% of the doctors said that they found patients, who did
background check of their problems online before consulting them. And nearly two-third of the
total doctors met patients, who were misguided by the information given on the net about
healthcare and about their own health issues. Still, 60% of doctors don’t share their research
work or their successful cases online. There are only 29% doctors who use LinkedIn frequently.
Things are even worse for Slideshare, where only 5% of doctors use it on a daily basis.
Slideshare is one of those websites that have the potential to change the way people are educated
in India. It can be extremely helpful in sharing information in the form of videos, Powerpoint
presentations and Pdfs. It can make available the most innovate pedagogies used around the
world to common man’s desk. Also, the Indian doctors who participated in this survey didn’t
have blogs – which plays a crucial role in contributing content and achieve visibility and
credibility for their personal brand using search engines. On one side doctors are coming across
content on internet which is misguiding and on the other side they don’t use Social Media much
to interact with patients or contribute content through the blogs – which is very important.

METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH:

200 Doctors were asked to fill the survey and answer the questions that enquire about their
activeness on social media. It was a type of exploratory research that aimed at how doctors use
social media and how they realize its presence in their day-to-day activities.

INTRODUCTION

With the advent of technology, the world has come a long way for us. One of the major
precursors of this change has been the internet. At the turn of the millennium, when some people
were thinking, “that’s it! we cannot go further; world wide web is the coolest thing we can
achieve”, the internet was undergoing a major change. The search engines were getting
overhauled with the introduction of new ways of communication, and names like Orkut and
MySpace were becoming common.

But time, tide and software coders wait for none. And soon the developers came up with ideas to
further enrich our social media experience, in the form of Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn and
Twitter. Google+, Instagram and Pinterest have further added spice to the potpourri and social
media has become an essential part of our personal and professional life and our daily
endeavours.
When so much has changed around us and we are using social media for every and anything in
our life, we thought why not sneak in to the life of doctors (with their permission, of course) and
see how they use social media for their daily activities.

As a part of our research methodology, we conducted a survey with a sample size of 200 doctors
and studied about their awareness and usage of social media for their personal and professional
interactions. We categorised these doctors on the basis of age, gender, years of experience, type
of work they are in, blogging habits and their experience so far with the social networking
channels.

A major finding during the project was that out of the total responses, 100% of people were
aware about social media websites. Out of which, 93% had their accounts on social media, which
is very encouraging.

34% of survey takers were females. We found that 92% of females used social media to connect
with family and friends, while 80% of males belonged to this category. 63% of females used
social media for 30 minutes to 1 hour. Average time spent by females online was 58.5 minutes,
while for males it was 74.5 minutes. When it came to participating in online forums or updating
research work, males and females were equally active with 66% females and 64% males for
online forums and 42% females and 40% males for updating research work. Also, 45% females
update their successful cases online, while in case of males it’s only 39%.