To our knowledge, two relevant studies have been published since the end date of our search. One study used Twitter and Facebook to share important concepts in a yearlong elective ultrasound course for Of the 27 participants who completed the study’s
fourth-year medical students. 43 follow-up survey, 88.9% found these social media tools to be user-friendly, and 81.5% found the educational content to be useful. The second study used a social networking portal compatible with low-bandwidth Internet connections to deliver dermatology instruction to eight medical students and interns in Somaliland and to allow participants to interact in real time with a tutor in the United Kingdom.44 All
six of the trainees who completed the feedback questionnaire indicated that the interactive format was more useful than textbook reading for learning the material, and four reported that they felt more con dent in describing rashes after completing the tutorial.
This systematic review has several limitations. Given the recent rapid growth in this literature, relevant articles have continued to be published since
we conducted our search, as discussed above. In addition, articles identi ed in our search did not always clearly de ne the form or content of social media technology used, so some may have been inappropriately excluded from this review. Publication bias favoring articles demonstrating bene ts of social media use versus those demonstrating equivalence or negative results must
be recognized, as in the context of any systematic review. Finally, the studies included in this review were too heterogeneous to perform sensitivity, subgroup, or meta-analyses.
Despite these limitations, this systematic review offers a foundation for future research and guidance for incorporating social media tools into medical curricula. Future scholarship in this new eld should include clear de nitions of social media technologies and their components to allow appropriate comparisons and data synthesis. In addition, it would be helpful to compare social media use with other educational methods, explore a variety
of learner populations, and examine skill- or behavior-based outcomes. Additional, higher-quality research is needed to establish best practices in the development of social media technology to enhance medical education.