How Social Media Are Reshaping Health Care - Coursework Example

How social media are Reshaping Health Care Abstract Health care problem have been an area of concern for the people of today because excellent health is the basis of a fulfilling life. Social media today makes it a lot easier for people to take care of their health. One does not have to get up early and queue to see a doctor while it is possible to have the patients’ condition diagnosed by several doctors online. We have to admit that social media brings us great convenience. However, there are negatives accompanying with the benefits. Internet and social media are not always that reliable. In order not to be mislead by the rumors, it’s essential to make related laws and regulations to norm the new health care market. How Social Media are Reshaping Health Care What do young people today play in their extracurricular activities? If your answer is still computer games, then it seems that you are out of date. Today the most popular activity among those young people is keeping fit. That is the reason as to why your friends who used to be overweight and extremely fond of junk food begun to refuse the cola you handed them and spent much time in the gym. A young man’s eight strong abdominals seem to be more attractive to girls than his luxury car. So how come? Why is keeping fit so popular? When do people start to concentrate more on their health care than how much money they make? Twitter and Facebook and other social media platforms offer individuals with health awareness tips. According to Hawn (2009), social media such as wikis, blogs, twitter, Facebook, and other social networks platforms are all about enriching and speeding up communication especially between the contact of patients and doctors. She described a kind of high-tech health care called “Hello Health” in her passage. Patients could send doctors instant messages over the Hello Health network describing their symptoms and asking them for advice; the doctor would reply with a quick e-mail, which is free. In effect, Hello Health was operating as a kind of “concierge” practice. Health insurers typically did not pay for “visits” over the Internet, which was just one reason as to why the practice does not accept health insurance. “Hello health left behind the old model of one-to-one communication and enabled communication from one to many (via a blog post or answer sheet) or from many sources to many receivers” (Hawn, 2009). The practice was based on its network communication platform to other doctors in service at hospitals or private practices across the country. Doctors would be able to freely join the network, and then employ the same patient communication and scheduling technology that Hello Health had pioneered. By adding a social networking feature to the platform, doctors could “friend” each other, and communicate to help one another out. Compared with the traditional procedures to see a physician, using the internet has become much more convenient and even more reliable. Also, it saves more time, so why not take more care of our health. However, even with the many advantages of health care created by the social media, the negatives should not be ignored. Twitter and other social media help to bring health information to many more people. Spreading the emergency messages about an outbreak is much faster than any influenza virus; the accuracy of such information remains an avenue of concern because not all of them are credible and accurate. “Type the word ‘malaria’ or ‘maternal mortality’ into a search engine, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that any person can amend, is expected to be the first reference” (McNab, 2009). So it does put more onus on the information provider to ensure the accuracy of the information. Critically, being engaged in a conversation requires social media not only to “pass down” the information, but also to add value to the conversation. By following these steps on credibility and accuracy will help to correct rumors or misinformation, provide feedback and offer personal experience. In recent years, social media have developed to become the source of rumors. In China, four years ago there was a famous health care accident due to some misleading information aired on a talk show. A medicine professor who seemed to be so proficient in food safety that he proposed that people are what they eat. To some extent his words were reasonable, but then he put up a theory that most of the illnesses could be cured automatically by eating healthy food. Healthy foods included; garlic, green beans, and eggplants, at the same time, he even published a book promoting his theory (McNab, 2009). As a result, people began to eat those “healthy foods” crazily, which caused a price increase of foodstuffs in an unbelievable manner. The outcome was the government had to swiftly make investments to refute the rumor and control the prices of those “healthy foods”. Ironically, the medicine professor was sent to the hospital early this year because of cerebral infarctions. Just like its applications in other areas, social media are a double-edged sword. Parents are pleasant to see their kids make progress and get higher scores with the help of technology, such as online learning resources. But parents are also afraid that their children may get lost in computer games and profanity that is readily available on the internet. Things are the same for health care. We have to admit that social media has its advantages in reshaping the position of health care in people’s mind. What citizens need to discover is how to clarify the information on the internet and make full use of it. According to McNab (2009), this will help individuals to be able to lead a happy life and enjoy the rapid progress of technology. At least our initial aim is to improve our living qualities through technology, but not to be absorbed by the drawbacks of technology. Conclusion What about the future of social media? Will it bring more benefits to health care? The example in the previously highlighted article called Hello Health has already shown people a bright future of combining social media and health care. The only problem is that most of the times the laws and regulations cannot catch-up with the pace of the development of technology. So, it is necessary to ensure that those newly developed technology remain under control of the government. It is believed that under suitable governing, the internet-based health care will be bigger and better. References Hawn, C. (2009). Take Two Aspirin And Tweet Me In The Morning: How Twitter, Facebook, And Other Social Media Are Reshaping Health Care. Health Affairs, 28(2), 361-368. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.28.2.361 McNab, C. (2009). What social media offers to health professionals and citizens. Bulletin Of The World Health Organization, 87(8), 566-566. doi:10.2471/blt.09.066712 Read More