CEBU CITY- The Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD) and the #HealthXPh has teamed up again to hold the 3rd Philippine Healthcare and Social Media Summit on 25 April 2017 at the Marco Polo Plaza Cebu Hotel.

With the theme “Social Media & Health Research: Connections that Matter,” this year’s summit focused on research with its six tracks following the research process from thinking of a topic (Track 1), ethical guidelines in research (Track 2), literature review (Track 4), software tools (Tracks 3 and 6), to research dissemination via social media (Track 5).

During the summit overview, Dr. Iris Thiele Isip-Tan, #HealthXPh Co-Founder, announced that the Summit was again a certified “Patients Included” explaining that patients were not only speaking at the summit but were also able to register to attend as healthcare workers can.

Dr. Isip-Tan added that it was also the first time that the Summit has an unconference, a participant-driven session.

In his message, Dr. Jaime Montoya, PCHRD Executive Director, emphasized that social media is now a widely used tool to create content, share ideas, show interests, and facilitate expressions.

“It [Social media] connects individuals, organizations, and agencies to build relationships and form communities online. Thus, it is important that we discuss the need to do research on social media as well as the ethical issues on its use as a tool in health research,” he said.

Healthcare professionals, patients and advocates, researchers, and students nationwide participated the Summit.