The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases: insights from patient-generated data on social media.

The findings show that Twitter serves as a real-time data source to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with RMDs. The platform provided 'early signals' of potentially critical health behaviour changes. Future epidemics might benefit from the real-time use of Twitter-based PGHD to identify emerging health needs, facilitate communication and inform clinical practice decisions.