Communicating in the infosphere: Challenges and opportunities for Laboratory Medicine

Communication is becoming more important than ever for health care and health care professionals, as the recent COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically highlighted. The fast evolution of the mass and social media and the continuous development of new health-related platforms and applications are imposing new challenges that involve also laboratory medicine and that need to be carefully considered. In fact, these novel, fast and effective strategies of communication are inherently prone to the risk of publishing misleading, incorrect or fake information which can spread uncontrollably and diffuse all over the world in a very short time. However, social media are undoubtedly a great opportunity to communicate, in a responsible and credible way, health-related data and scientific updates and discoveries. As for the therapeutic alliance, it is now required to establish an "information alliance" between different healthcare professionals which, based on a trustworthy relationship, will allow the correct diffusion of health-related information and will contribute to citizens' education.