Background

Following an increase in the use of the internet in everyday life, research has identified that individuals are increasingly turning to the internet as a means for identifying information about healthcare conditions.1 One study identified that 98% of parents surveyed used the internet to search for information about their child's condition.2 While the use of the internet as an information seeking source is not problematic in itself, a substantial proportion of information has been identified as not being credible, meaning that families are often faced with poor quality non-evidence-based healthcare information.3 Compounding this problem is the fact that families typically do not have access to the traditional academic sources in which research studies are published, and there is a lengthy 17-year gap between publication of research findings and implementation of findings in clinical practice.4 In order to address these issues, a Twitter chat took place to explore how we can better reach families with evidence-based healthcare information.

Key messages from the Twitter chat (#ebnjc)