Current Issues in Social Media - Case Study Example

Current Issues in Social Media Social Healthcare: Connecting and Collaborating Toward a Healthier Future Social media according to Spector and Kappel (2012) is the process of individuals utilising online platforms as well as tools to share information and content. Presently, social media is considerably transforming the way people communicate and its capability to improve healthcare delivery cannot be underrated. Undoubtedly, it is a fundamental tool for customer service relations and marketing in any organisation; therefore, in healthcare, social media is no different. Internationally, healthcare professionals together with healthcare organizations are already utilising social media as an essential platform for connecting with providers and clients in addition to enlighten product development (Bacigalupe, 2011). Early adopters’ experiences make known that a successful strategy for social media can be utilised to achieve healthcare goals and objectives in four crucial areas: innovation rate, clinical results, information sharing, and communication. In deliberating how to make use of social media, CMA (2014) posits that it will be expensive for healthcare organizations to take a wait-and-see approach since the competitors may end up catching up with them. The essay seeks to examine social healthcare with regard to connecting and collaborating toward a healthier future. Undeniably, social media has essentially changed the healthcare industry’s communications relationship. The surfacing of social media communications platforms that permit sincere as well as open conversation offers an affluence of opportunities for the health industry to build on positive patient attitude and develop a support community that is trusted to dynamically connect with (Azizi, 2013). Scores of healthcare bodies are as well utilizing social media to put up and nurture a group of patient evangelists who have the ability to consequently spread kindness and develop brand fairness to assist maintain confidence as well as trust in health care services. Social media is at last turning out to be a treasured tool that assist improve patient insights of an industry conventionally considered with cynicism and contempt by scores due to careless spending, prevalent inadequacies, unnecessary harm to patients, avoidable care, continuous red tape, as shortage of transparency (Bacigalupe, 2011). Presently, social media is in all places including Canadian society, and from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube, all and sundry appear to be connected online in one way or another. Evidently, social media have transformed the manner in which persons communicate, build relationships, interrelate as well as collect and distribute information (CMA, 2014). To scores of individuals, social media is merely a name of renowned online products like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. But generally, social media as per Anderson and Guyton (2013) is a set of web-based as well as mobile technologies that permit individuals to supervise, build, and share photos, text or video. According to CMA (2014), this information can be shared indirectly like posting text to on someone’s wall or multi-directionally such as taking part in a debate hosted on an online forum. Besides that, social media stresses on interactive, user-driven communication; however, it is irrefutable that the social media as well as Internet platforms have turn out to be an essential element of how patients together with community members search for health information and heighten patients’ sense of engagement. Conventionally, patients were inactive medical care recipients with small or no part to play in making decisions about the plans for their own treatments in case they become sick (Tapscott & Williams, 2014). This is for the reason that patients were isolated and hardly ever did they communicate or share information. For decades, healthcare took place only when the patient entered the healthcare system, and this was the only present model. However, Web 2.0 places the knowledgeable patient into a new milieu, and it facilitates a novel medicine model acknowledged as collaborative healthcare. In 2002, PatientsLikeMe was created by two brothers as a means to assist fast track learning on Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). At the moment PatientsLikeMe is an online most lively web communities, with over 80,000 members who share individual medical history with other members. The contributed data is then aggregated to track responses as well as patterns to diverse treatments. According to Tapscott and Williams (2014), for uncommon diseases such as ALS, scores of doctors can just come across one or two patients in their medical life; however, online platforms like PatientsLikeMe permits patients and doctors to compare and analyze treatments with many other patients, facilitating hastily to enlighten the subsequent path to follow. Collaborative healthcare is beneficial since it offers a system that is cheap, secure and improved as compared to exists these days. The Web 2.0 has for the first time helped individuals to share information, self-organize, add to the knowledge, and growing to be active in handling their individual health. Professionals in healthcare industry, which includes doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and pharmacists, have a lot of choices when it comes to setting up a presence in the online platforms. Akin to others, they can join social networks like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and LinkedIn or even start their own blog. Besides that, there exist online communities solely for practitioners in the healthcare industry. Even though it has taken time for these practitioners to draw level, they have entered Health 2.0  as well as are currently looking for ways they can promote education in the health industry, collaborate, and personalize health care. Prior to getting on the bandwagon, Anderson and Guyton (2013) suggest that healthcare practitioners must be aware of the potential consequences of using social media platforms to post health information. Scores of legal issues can crop up when providers in the healthcare industry utilize social media, and they include issues associated with patient privacy, status of tax-exempt, ill-treatment and deception, as well as physician licensing. In healthcare, privacy is extremely tricky, especially when a healthcare professional post in Facebook, tweet something that is unacceptable or against the patient he/she is handling. The fundamental aspect here is that healthcare professionals have to be ever attentive to the privacy settings as well as the rules highlighted by the healthcare policy with regard to the use of social media platforms and tools (Azizi, 2013). Content Ownership is another ethical consideration in the healthcare industry, and so professionals in this industry must ensure they understand the terms of use policies of any social media platform permissible for them to utilize. Therefore, it is wise to abstain from posting any sort of intellectual property on online sites such as Twitter. Breach of Intellectual Property is another ethical consideration, and even though it is appropriate to share ideas and collaborate with associates through social media platforms, the health care practitioners must to be extremely cautious about who access such collaborations. Spector and Kappel (2012) posit that it is imperative to make sure that workers who take part in the collaboration comprehend what information can and cannot be shared through social media or any other online medium. Another ethical consideration is Unauthorized Activities, which plainly covers a crowd of offenses like bias, harassment, unjust competition, insult, disclosure of private information as well as scandalous behaviour. The final ethical consideration in this case is Regulatory Compliance: every healthcare practitioner knows about Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as well as how essential it is to abide by to the guidelines presented by the act. In this case, medical practitioners are strictly advised to adhere to the rules and regulation presented by HIPAA, and should not in any way post confidential information about a patient in his/her Facebook wall (Anderson & Guyton, 2013). Current trends noticeable in social media in health care consist of: engaging e-patient, managing a conversation; personal health records convergence; and social media for healthcare providers. Presently, providers and hospitals are walking a fine line between offering certain medical advice in the moderately community forums of social media as well as offering more comprehensive health information. Simultaneously, there subsist means to instigate dialogue with health care professionals to respond to patient-submitted questions. In this regard, a lot of medical information pertinent to scores is offered devoid of particular medical advice for a health condition of the patient. Besides that, the increase of e-Patients generates score of engagement chances. E-Patients in this case can be defined as patients who are engaged, empowered, enabled, and equipped in their wellbeing as well as decisions about health care. In the future, e-patients will offer feedback not just on facilitating hospital social media sites but as well as partakers in quality enhancement in the healthcare system. Undeniably, social media in health care is here to stay, but in the future it will advance hastily, and engagement of patient will continue to typify this advancement. Health care organisations will make use of social media strategically within their general communications as well as marketing efforts, and mobile together with video technology will possibly dictate such approaches. What’s more, online patient communities will get bigger and will turn out to be a wealthy basis of information for others patients and doctors. Besides that, in the future there will be incessant cases of privacy infringements; treacherous propaganda; and scam promoted through social media, but such cases will not stop the wave of conversation and innovation. References Anderson, S. C., & Guyton, M. R. (2013). Ethics in an Age of Information Seekers: A Survey of Licensed Healthcare Providers about Online Social Networking. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 31(2), 112-128. Azizi, T. (2013). The issues surrounding social network sites and healthcare professionals. The Journal of Perioperative Practice, 23(10), 233-236. Bacigalupe, G. E. (2011). Is There a Role for Social Technologies in Collaborative Healthcare? Families, Systems & Health, 29(1), 1-14. CMA. (2014). Social media and Canadian physicians - issues and rules of engagement. Retrieved from Canadian Medical Association.: http://www.cma.ca/advocacy/social-media-canadian-physicians Spector, N. P., & Kappel, D. M. (2012). Guidelines for Using Electronic and Social Media: The Regulatory Perspective. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 17(3), 1-9. Tapscott, D., & Williams, A. D. (2014). Collaborative Healthcare. Retrieved from Macrowikinomics: http://www.macrowikinomics.com/collaborative-healthcare/ Read More