Description of Research Expertise:
Dr. Merchant is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and has a secondary appointment in the Department of Internal Medicine and Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care. She is a Co-Director of the RWJF Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania and the Director of the Penn Social Media and Health Innovation Lab (http://socialmedialab.upenn.edu/) Her research interest is in diffusion of innovation, social media, public health, and resuscitation science. Her work involves development and testing of health related mobile apps and she has conducted several projects evaluating health communication on social/mobile media sites like Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Gigwalk, and others. She additionally runs a Twitter lab which analyzes tweets related to resuscitation, critical care, and public health/policy. Much of her work bridges new technologies in the field of cardiovascular health. In this context, she is the Director of the MyHeartMap Challenge, (http://www.med.upenn.edu/myheartmap/) a social media and crowdsourcing project aimed at improving AED access and awareness by engaging the public to serve as citizen scientist. Dr. Merchant was recently recognized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as one of 10 young investigators likely to have a significant impact on the future of health and healthcare in the US.
Selected Publications:
Newsweek: People who Post About God on Facebook are More Likely to Have This Serious Medical Condition, Researchers Find https://www.newsweek.com/people-who-post-about-god-facebook-are-more-likely-have-this-serious-medical-condition-1444835 : 2019.
CBS3: Study: Researchers Can Predict Medical Conditions From Facebook Profiles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-nxFHYsxN0 : 2019.
Merchant RM, Asch DA, Crutchley P, Ungar LH, Guntuku SG, Eichstaedt J, HillS, Padrez K, Smith RJ, Schwartz HA.: Medical condition are predictable from social media posts Plos One 14 (6): e0215476,2019.
New York Post: Scientists can predict medical conditions off your Facebook posts https://nypost.com/2019/06/18/scientists-can-predict-medical-conditions-off-your-facebook-posts/ : 2019.
PsychCentral: Social Media Data Used to ID Mental Health Conditions and Diabetes https://psychcentral.com/news/2019/06/21/social-media-data-used-to-id-mental-health-conditions-and-diabetes/147984.html : 2019.
NY Daily News: Your Facebook profile may reveal whether you have a medical condition, study says. https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-researchers-medical-conditions-facebook-profiles-20190619-bgbceg452jdpvc7shkpxh3la2a-story.html : 2019.
Phillips CA, Hunt A, Salvesen-Quinn M, Guerra J, Schapira MM, Bailey LC, Merchant RM.: Health-related Google Search Patterns of Parents of Pediatric Oncology Patients
Pediatric Blood and Cancer. : e27795,2019.
Agarwal A, Merchant RM: Told, the most used word in negative online hospital reviews Journal of General Internal Medicine 14 : 2019.
Asch JM, Asch DA, Klinger EV, Marks J, Sadek N, Merchant RM: Google search histories of patients presenting to an emergency department: an observational study. BMJ Open 9 (2): 2019.
seltzer E, Goldshear J, Guntuku SC, Grande D, Asch DA, Klinger EV, Merchant RM: Patients willingness to share digital health and non-health data for research: a cross-sectional study BMC Medical Informatics : 2019.