Role of Social Media in Health Organization's Decision-Making Process

This report discusses the role of social media in making decisions in the healthcare sector. It explores how social media allows access to the healthcare industry, facilitates communication, and improves decision-making. The report also highlights the benefits and limitations of using social media for health communication.

Emerging technologies and innovation

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................1
Role of Social media in health organisation’s decision- making process..................................1
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
The new and emerging technologies are used to improve the lives of people. This leads to
improvement by offering them flexibility and offer new ways through which business could
be conducted. In this report many articles related to the topic how social media helps in
making decisions in the healthcare sector are discussed. Various articles states that health
care have proved beneficial for making decisions. Social networking sites allow access to
healthcare industry from any network. It keeps the patients in touch with the doctors and have
an accurate and community safe. Thus, this reports consists a critical review from different
authors.
Role of Social media in health organisation’s decision- making process
Moorhead, S. A., Hazlett, D. E., Harrison, L., Carroll, J. K., Irwin, A., & Hoving, C.
(2013). A new dimension of health care: systematic review of the uses, benefits, and
limitations of social media for health communication. Journal of medical Internet
research, 15(4).
It is seen that social media have helped in making decision in health care sector by selecting
aspects of perceived reality and then making decision by identifying past records. Social
media brings a new dimension in the health care sector as it offers the view of public, private
ad experts from any location. Social media has made possible to offer accessibility to patients
from anywhere. Social media offers various benefits allows health related communication,
permit to exchange the information so that it can be monitored from nay where. Social media
has allowed patients to take advice from any professional doctor instead of going at their
place. It can also be used to offer face to face communication so that chances of uncertainty

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and ambiguity get reduced. It offers opportunities to generate and share social content. It has
also changed the nature and speed of health care between health organisations and individual.
Evariant. (2017). The Evolving Role of Social Media in Healthcare: Benefits & Tactics.
Retrieved from https://www.evariant.com/blog/the-evolving-role-of-social-media-in-
healthcare.
Social media have helped in making decisions as it allow organisations to make connections,
share discoveries and then developing plans for improvement. Social media focuses on the
past health care experienced and allow patients to raise their voice and concerns so that
decisions are made according to it. It can be considered as patient powered platform that
connect to target groups and explore care methods by learning each other experience and
their health system. It allows continuous flow and discovery of health related information so
that data can remain available and tweets or comments can be received from different people.
These comments are then analysed and best of the decisions is made.
Naslund, J. A., Aschbrenner, K. A., Marsch, L. A., & Bartels, S. J. (2016). The future of
mental health care: peer-to-peer support and social media. Epidemiology and psychiatric
sciences, 25(2), 113-122.
It is found that people who suffer from serious illness make use of social media to share their
experience and then seek advices from people or experts going through similar issues. Thus,
it can be said that social media is an unsolicited medium of communication between patients
and individuals to share their concerns and look for reviews. Social media has allowed people
to share their personal experiences so that strategies could be suggested by others to easily
cope up from it. It allows patients to learn from peers and seek guidance from their

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behaviour. It also promotes treatment engagement by exploring the risk associated with the
illness.
Sarasohn-Kahn, J. (2018). The wisdom of patients: Health care meets online social media,
8(3), 145-199.
In this article author talks about how social media promotes in making decisions for patients.
Social media have helped in making decision and also offer health care delivery. It facilitates
care by improving their daily condition this could be done by keeping an eye on them. This
monitors plans through which quality could be improved and overall cost could be reduced. It
has added up transparency and openness so that decisions could be made appropriately. The
information of a patient can also be shifted from one place to other easily. Social media
targets the audience by designing health plans and designing programs for health safety on
social media.
Brian. G., Smith. G. & Smith. B. (2017). Health Research and Policymaking in the Social
Media Sphere. Retrieved from
https://www.academyhealth.org/sites/default/files/AH_Translation%20Engaging
%20Health%20Social%20Media%20Sphere.pdf
Social media and technology have played a huge role in health care organisation as most of
the reports and documents are automatically completed. It does not require manual entries.
Apart from that health care organisation offers access to information via social media
platforms that have added flexibility in gathering information. Apart from that views are
taken from different vendors for the best approach. Social media also offers new health care
policies and create awareness so that information could be analysed and decisions could be
taken accordingly.

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Rolls, K., Hansen, M., Jackson, D., & Elliott, D. (2016). How health care professionals use
social media to create virtual communities: an integrative review. Journal of medical
Internet research, 18(6).
From the review of this article it can be stated that, social media can be considered as an
effective tool while making decision in the healthcare organisations. As all the information is
updated about the patients on the network so that in case of emergency condition anyone can
actively access the information and decisions could be taken. Social media offers general
awareness about the medical information so that patient can seek treatment on time. It offers
prodigious opportunity in the healthcare department for patients to raise their concern and
look for better measures.
Yonker, L. M., Zan, S., Scirica, C. V., Jethwani, K., & Kinane, T. B. (2015). “Friending”
teens: systematic review of social media in adolescent and young adult health care. Journal
of medical Internet research, 17(1).
From the all the research it can be concluded that social media is a tool that widens the target
market and all health care patient to take care suggestions from anywhere. It makes all the
remote doctors available for the patients on a single click. It is an approach through which
instant and effective decisions could be made. It is a best platform in making decisions as
patients can choose right advisor for their patient. Thus the whole idea behind social media is
taking the support of peer people while making sensitive decisions.
Glover, M., Choy, G., Boland, G. W., Saini, S., & Prabhakar, A. M. (2015). Radiology and
social media: are private practice radiology groups more social than academic radiology
departments?. Journal of the American College of Radiology, 12(5), 513-518.

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Social media in health care sector has proved to be beneficial as it allow patient to
communicate freely during a crisis and get instantaneous support from the experts. It builds
up awareness among an individual so that prevention could be taken easily. It also minimizes
the misinformation related to the treatment as challenges could be tackled by any care
authorities. The opinions gained from different people can then be clubbed and best possible
result could be selected.
Fernández-Luque, L., & Bau, T. (2015). Health and social media: perfect storm of
information. Healthcare informatics research, 21(2), 67-73.
By analysing the article it was found that, it fills up the gap between patient issue and getting
recommendation. Social media increases the trust and credibility for making decisions by
gaining the interest of patients segment from different doctors. It also raises the awareness for
campaigns so that patients can participate in it and understand their situation so that better
result could be taken. Health care managers use social media to enhance their services so that
they can provide patients with accurate medical treatment.
Thompson, M. A., Majhail, N. S., Wood, W. A., Perales, M. A., & Chaboissier, M. (2015).
Social media and the practicing hematologist: Twitter 101 for the busy healthcare
provider. Current hematologic malignancy reports, 10(4), 405-412.
Social media can be used as a best platform for information sharing and checking he quality
benchmarks. It can be used for making decisions and improving the performance of an
organisation. The objective of social media is to access the patient’s information from any
location so that they can communicate with one another easily. Many healthcare
organisations deliver the trainers so that they can give immediate feedbacks from expert and
patients can get access to treatment plan. Social media is a best way to understand the
situation of patient and then analysing its drawbacks from past experience. It is a medium of

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spreading awareness about any illness or condition. Social media increases the trust and
credibility for making decisions by gaining the interest of patients segment from different
doctors.
Thompson, M. A., Majhail, N. S., Wood, W. A., Perales, M. A., & Chaboissier, M. (2015).
Social media and the practicing hematologist: Twitter 101 for the busy healthcare
provider. Current hematologic malignancy reports, 10(4), 405-412.
From understanding of this research paper, it was found that social media helps in making
decisions as it allow an individual to share opinions and seek information and stories from
their healthcare experience. In fact in today’s time doctors use avenue for delivering better
healthcare options to patients. Social media has impacted the health care organisation by
allowing them to serve their services globally in a cost effective manner. Some of the benefits
that are gained in healthcare organisation due to social media are spreading awareness via
Twitter or Facebook. It creates awareness among people so that victims take proper
precautions from the experience of other patients. Social media increases the participation
and also increases interaction with other. It also increases access and allow doctors to control
all the information using social media. It allows patient to get emotional support from peer
people. It also impacts health care policy by offering tangible and symmetric access to all the
healthcare organisations. It resolves the issue of medical isolation as it offers services from
all the geographical location.
Agnihotri, R., Dingus, R., Hu, M. Y., & Krush, M. T. (2016). Social media: Influencing
customer satisfaction in B2B sales. Industrial Marketing Management, 53, 172-180.
The article states that social media has proved to offer satisfaction to customers in very term.
In case of health care sector, they take advices from different experts. This gives a wider view
of understanding the situation. The decisions are taken by understanding the situation from

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different perception. Thus, it can be used as a research tool to offer marketing and
communication to educate healthcare consumers. Social media has impacted healthcare
sector as patients look for doctors who are actively present on social media. The health
information present on social media can be used for making decisions as they establish strong
patient to patient connection. They allow growing relationship by engaging more target
audience that are allowed to share their experience. The access to others experience help
professional expects to take accurate decisions. It offers friendly and timey interaction.
Additionally, it allows patient to facilitate in emergency condition by taking instant help.
Apart from that, the article states that social media is also useful for doctors at time of making
decisions. Social media platforms offer a convenient and faster way to communicate and
discuss the concern.
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded from all the discussion that social media can be used for making
decisions in the healthcare industry. It offers discoverable and access to services from any
locations. It allows users to access their report in a self-regulating manner. Social media in
healthcare industry offer various benefits like lost cost participation and exploration of others
situation. The discovery about other illness can be used in making appropriate decisions.
Social media allows distributing the information freely so that suggestions should be taken
easily. The objective of social media is to access the patient’s information from any location
so that they can communicate with one another easily. Many healthcare organisations deliver
the trainers so that they can give immediate feedbacks from expert and patients can get access
to treatment plan. Thus, it can be concluded that in health care professions social media keeps
patients and doctors updated about the latest trends.