Using Twitter to understand UK healthcare experiences during Covid-19

To understand people’s experiences of remote consultations during the pandemic, we used Twitter data to quickly gain insights.

We acquired the tweets posted in the UK between January 2018 and October 2020. In total, 1,408 tweets across three search terms were extracted of which, 161 tweets were removed following de-duplication and 610 were irrelevant to our questions. The remaining 637 relevant tweets were coded into themes, and assigned a positive, neutral, or negative sentiment. Key themes identified were: access to remote care, quality of remote care, anticipation of remote care, online booking and email/messaging communications and publicising changes to services or care delivery. These themes were analysed to identify topics and patterns.

This research is funded by the Institute for Health Research Policy Research Programme, conducted through the Quality, Safety and Outcomes Policy Research Unit, PR-PRU-1217-20702. The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

The published paper can be seen http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/31101.