Is There A Place For Facebook In Healthcare?

Data privacy scandals, help in rigging elections, spreading fake news on COVID and vaccines: Facebook has been through a lot and users are not happy with the social media giant’s performance. However, Mark Zuckerberg’s company does not only have a political and social impact, but it’s also getting quite relevant in healthcare.

We looked around what Facebook currently does in healthcare and evaluated whether those are viable ways to follow in the future.

The social media machine built on “sophisticated, computer-driven engines for extracting users’ personal information and data trails“, found itself in the middle of social and political debates as it failed to take into consideration its influence on its users – be it individuals, companies, publishers or nations.

From the Cambridge Analytica scandal through the Trump campaigns to COVID-19 misinformation, the giant failed to act upon serious issues in time. And as news arouse about the tech giant’s Preventive Health tool and is said to be building its own wearable, we can’t NOT connect the dots and realise how Facebook is slowly stepping into healthcare.

So we looked around what its relation is to healthcare. Does it handle private health data and if so, how exactly? Does it allow the dissemination of insane, health-related fake news? How does it fair in community building and how does it offer its own tools for health issues? Let’s see.