The Role of Social Media in Hospitals and Healthcare

Jason P Richter (2014) illustrated how social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram can be used by hospitals and used to create various opportunities in future. Various strategies such as audience engagement, advertisement of products and propagation of medical and health-related information were studied using multiple real-time cases.

The exploratory study's main objectives to determine how to improve the efficiency of using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus, LinkedIn and other blogs by hospitals; how to make target audience be well informed about a hospital's location and features as well as engage them by providing opportunities to raise queries, share feedback and share reviews.

It was concluded that social media could be used to pass on critical information to broad range of consumers in a very short span of time if used effectively and efficiently.

Katherine T Smith (2017), carried out a research to determine how usage of social media varied according to the size and specialties available in a hospital. It was estimated that about 95% of leading multi-specialty hospitals around the globe used multiple social media platforms to reach out to the consumers directly and promoted modified advertisements that appealed to various age groups after curation.

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It was concluded that hospitals that had the ability to offer more services had more actively managed social media handles.

Healthcare providers used the medium as a forum to provide clarifications, allow consumers to raise queries, disseminate information on healthy lifestyle and clean habits, build trust on their brands using authenticated reviews and feedback. Some organizations also used social media for fund raising activities and create awareness on recently discovered diseases.