  Understanding patient experience in healthcare is increasingly important and
desired by medical professionals in a patient-centered care approach.
Healthcare discourse on social media presents an opportunity to gain a unique
perspective on patient-reported experiences, complementing traditional survey
data. These social media reports often appear as first-hand accounts of
patients' journeys through the healthcare system, whose details extend beyond
the confines of structured surveys and at a far larger scale than focus groups.
However, in contrast with the vast presence of patient-experience data on
social media and the potential benefits the data offers, it attracts
comparatively little research attention due to the technical proficiency
required for text analysis. In this paper, we introduce the
Design-Acquire-Process-Model-Analyse-Visualise (DAPMAV) framework to provide an
overview of techniques and an approach to capture patient-reported experiences
from social media data. We apply this framework in a case study on prostate
cancer data from /r/ProstateCancer, demonstrate the framework's value in
capturing specific aspects of patient concern (such as sexual dysfunction),
provide an overview of the discourse, and show narrative and emotional
progression through these stories. We anticipate this framework to apply to a
wide variety of areas in healthcare, including capturing and differentiating
experiences across minority groups, geographic boundaries, and types of
illnesses.
