The Role of Social Media Engagement (SME) in Healthcare-
❝ Social media platforms are lively, you can not carry out effective healthcare branding and digital marketing without making use of them prudently. ❞
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Yelp, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, and many other social media platforms continue to grow in popularity and fan bases.
In terms of popularity, Statista reports that as of January 2020:
- Instagram recently topped 1.0 billion monthly active users.
- Twitter has 340 million users.
- Facebook has over 2.45 billion users worldwide.
- WhatsApp has over 1.6 billion users.
- Facebook Messenger has 1.3 billion users.
- WeChat has 1.16 billion users.
- Pinterest has 322 million users.
1 billion users log into Facebook daily.
1oo million hours of videos are watched on YouTube every day.
Increased usage of personal computing, smartphones and iPads through various apps backed by the exponential explosion in internet and social media usage utilizes this change.
The Healthcare industry is no exception. It is therefore important to review the impact of technology specifically in the context of Social Media Engagement (SME) in healthcare interventions.
Engaging patients through social media empowers them to conduct extensive medical research thereby aiding informed decision-making on the due course of treatment.
Therefore, Health Care Professionals (HCPs) should synchronize with social media for meeting demanding consumer preferences and realign strategies by adjustments.
This entails employing digital marketing channels for connecting prospective clientele with a targeted Return on Investments (ROI) focus rather than traditional advertising modes like radio, newspaper, and television.
During the past decade, social platforms like Facebook and Twitter have emerged as powerful propagators and confidentiality considerations.
Reasons For Considering Social Media Engagement (SME) Strategy In Healthcare Practices-
Catering to a wider audience considering the voluminous transactions of digital healthcare activity
- The mass proliferation of web-linked patient communities and support forums as a platform for information exchange with family/ friends/ others
- Direct Impact of social media advertising on ROI
- Social media channels are diversified, quickly adaptable to rapid shifts in usage
- and provide enhanced user experiences
- Online resources provide quick access to reliable data for aiding physicians in making appropriate clinical decisions
- Certain specific diseases receive the greatest amount of attention due to lifestyle changes, proactive health insurance incentives ions
Popularly Accessed Social Media Channels-
- Wikipedia –
An online free, comprehensive encyclopaedia that is widely trusted by patients and physicians. But at times it is vulnerable to misinformation and biased views thereby creating concerns both medically and academically.
- Twitter –
An effective broadcasting platform that incorporates user-generated comments or ‘tweets’, link sharing and ‘live’ event sharing. However, it lacks centralised control and requires frequent updates
- Facebook –
The largest and most diverse social network with provision for creating a peer network with an extended service portfolio including groups, events, games and personal messaging.
- Linkedin-
An amazing business and employment-oriented social networking service. It is one of the largest professional networking social media platforms for building a relationship.
It is a great tool to increase the business and a great resource to grow the network which is preferred by most of the healthcare industries. Privacy concerns and a lack of actively engaged users are the pitfalls in LinkedIn.
- YouTube –
Most popular channel for sharing video content and comments that can be easily linked with other networks. It is preferred by most physicians for its highly informative, detail-orientated videos and it promotes emotive patient-focused content.
Disadvantages include large time and financial investments and the requirement of specialist skills
Risk involved in adopting SME in Healthcare-
- Poor Quality of Information-
The main limitation of health information found on social media and other online sources is a lack of quality and reliability. Authors of medical information found on social media sites are often unknown or are identified by limited information.
In addition, the medical information may be unreferenced, incomplete, or informal.While evidence-based medicine de-emphasizes anecdotal reports, social media tend to emphasize them, relying on individual patient stories for collective medical knowledge.
Similar problems exist with traditional online media; however, the interactive nature of social media magnifies these issues, since any user can upload content to a site.
Measures are available that may be useful in addressing this problem. HCPs can guide patients to credible peer-reviewed websites where the information is subject to quality control.
The World Health Organization is leading a request to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to establish a new domain suffix that would be used solely for validated health information.
2. Damage to professional image-
A major risk associated with the use of social media is the posting of unprofessional content that can reflect unfavorably on HCP’s. Social media convey information about a person’s personality, values, and priorities, and the first impression generated by this content can be lasting.
It is not unusual for social media users to be connected to overlapping networks of friends, family, and colleagues.Some users try to keep their personal and professional images separate by creating different accounts.
This may be difficult to implement in practice because personal and professional contacts often overlap.
However, most social networking sites now provide privacy settings that allow individuals to customize both their profile content and who can view it.
Ideally, account and privacy settings should be set in a way that enables one’s network to expand while limiting the exposure of information to people outside of the network.
3. Breaches of Patient Privacy-
Concerns regarding the use of social media by HCPs frequently center on the potential for negative repercussions resulting from the breach of patient confidentiality.
Whether communicating with or about patients on social media, breaches of patient confidentiality can result in legal action against an HCP and potentially his or her employer.
However, it is important to note that HIPAA ( does not restrict the distribution of medical information that has been “de-identified.”
The patient’s consent is a critical issue to consider when using social media. An HCP or health care organization might determine whether patient permission is needed by considering the place of publication.
The use of specific HIPAA-compliant messaging systems, such as that provided within Doximity, may be theoretically safe even for patient-identifying information, assuming that the recipient has medical justification for receiving such information.
The patient’s consent is a critical issue to consider when using social media. An HCP or health care organization might determine whether patient permission is needed by considering the place of publication.
The use of specific HIPAA-compliant messaging systems, such as that provided within Doximity, may be theoretically safe even for patient-identifying information, assuming that the recipient has medical justification for receiving such information.
However, it is ultimately up to the individual HCP, the practice, or the organization to decide when they will seek patient consent before posting de-identified case details online.
Challenges In Adopting SME In Healthcare-
- Regulatory Issues include Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) reporting. HCPs must report all known ADRs to the regulators for purpose of drug safety
- Technical challenges include replying to online interactions, handling voluminous data transactions between social media and mobile devices, loss of content control and privacy concerns.
- Lack of familiarity with social media
- Internal issues (like focussing on ROI of SME) pertaining to regulatory adherence and privacy concerns
Conclusion-
The healthcare information sought on social media is generally related to specific disease enquiries for self/ relations/friends. Significantly, SMEs is sought to fulfil an unmet information need or seek emotional support.
The borders demarcated by age-wise utilization will diminish over the coming years as digital technology percolates to increase its involvement and influence professionally.
SME is currently in a state of flux. Also, penetration of additional channels and usages will emerge shortly, with platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr gaining increasing importance.
These evolving trends will bind the HCPs closer to optimizing their potential for delivering the best possible outcomes for patient engagements.
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