Social media for empowering people with diabetes: Current status and future trends

The use of social media has become commonplace in society. Consequently, many people living with chronic conditions are turning to social media applications to support self-management. This paper presents a formative non-exhaustive review of research literature regarding the role of social media for diabetes type II empowerment. In our review, we identified several major areas for diabetes health social media research, namely: a) social network data analytics, b) mHealth and diabetes, c) gamification for diabetes, c) wearable, and d) MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). In all these areas, we analyzed how social media is being used and the challenges emerging from its application in the diabetes domain.