SOCIAL BUSINESS

Synergies Abound When Health Care Organizations Tap Social Media

Alison Diana | Date: 01-30-12 | Comments

Health care organizations are using innovative forms of social media to inform and engage users.

Table of Contents:

Synergies Abound When Health Care Organizations Tap Social Media
Health care and social media are a natural fit. After all, 84 percent of health care professionals polled in one small survey use social media for personal reasons, and 75 percent use it for professional reasons within their institution. Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed use social networking for both, according to the Web-based study conducted in August 2011 by Frost & Sullivan in conjunction with the Institute for Health Technology Transformation (iHT2).

On the consumer side, of the 74 percent of adults who used the Internet in August and September 2010, 80 percent of them have looked online for information about any of 15 health topics such as a specific disease or treatment, the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project study "The Social Life of Health Information" found. One-fourth of Internet users watched an online video about health or medical issues; 23 percent of social network site users followed their friends' personal health experiences or updates on the site; 17 percent of social network site users used social networking sites to remember or memorialize other people who suffered from a certain health condition, and 15 percent of social network site users received any kind of health information on these sites, according to Pew Research.

he most popular social applications include social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as health care organizations' in-house social networking applications, Frost & Sullivan found. Other top technologies include Internet message boards and forums; blogs; chat rooms; sharing sites for video, photography and music; microblogging sites; and wikis, according to the report.

Source: Frost & Sullivan

Here, in Part 1 of this blog, are examples of innovative ways health care organizations are using social media to inform and engage users. (Part 2 of this blog will appear later this week. It will include additional examples.)

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