Search results

While hospitals have done much over the last five years to push new media marketing, little research has been done to find out whether such endeavors are justified by users' healthcare online information consumption. This study attempts to find evidence for or against such endeavors.

Using the Delphi technique, this study investigated both users' healthcare video consumption behavior and their underlying rationales through three rounds of questions among 30 users of varied demographic backgrounds as a purposive sample.

Most participants did not watch videos hospital web sites because of their stereotypical understanding that hospital web sites provide no more than clerical information and because of videos' perceived inefficiency in delivering relevant and personalized information. However, most participants expressed their willingness to watch videos if the presentation is improved.

Although the Delphi technique is arguably the best approach when there is no defined population for sampling, a small sample may still be inadvertently biased toward the participants.

Hospitals need to make users aware of the abundant healthcare information in multimedia formats including video on their web sites, present the relevant content, and make such presentations easily digestible.

Hospitals' move into online new media marketing may help hospitals establish levels of trust with their online users comparable to the levels doctors currently enjoy and encourage consumers to visit hospital web sites as part of their healthcare decision‐making process.

For the very first time, this study has answered from the users' perspective and with evidential support the question whether hospitals' march into new media marketing is justified.

Healthcare is becoming an important part of people's online content consumption, with people searching for information on diseases or medical problems, treatments or procedures, particular doctors or hospitals, or about parking. This paper aims to investigate what users deem essential on patient‐oriented interactive e‐health tools on hospital web sites.

The findings are based on 242 patients/users from diverse backgrounds in a purposive sample. A modified Delphi technique was used in two rounds of survey to collect and analyze data.

The respondents highly desire core‐business tools, especially access to medical records and lab results, while discounting hospitals' efforts to connect to social media. Hospitals' e‐health implementation on their web sites has greatly lagged behind the users' needs for interacting with hospitals online. It is concluded that, while continuing to provide traditional functional tools, hospitals should expedite their development in providing core e‐business tools and emerging functional tools in order to accomplish multiple objectives, including service, education, and marketing.

Hospitals' e‐health development efforts have been behind the users' expectations at large. Future research should explore whether such lagging has resulted mainly from the lack of technical know‐how, lack of funding, and/or lack of vision on the administrative level.

The paper provides solid empirical evidence for US hospitals to (re)consider how to prioritize their efforts in implementing e‐health online so as to build a user‐centric web site.

Most US hospitals have implemented some form of e‐health online to serve their patients/users, but rarely have researchers studied such efforts. As a result, hospitals have had little evidence to gauge their implementation success. This is the first empirical study that investigates from the patient/user perspective the usefulness of various interactive e‐health tools online.

The purpose of this study is to explore how vulnerable healthcare consumers foster social support through visual storytelling in social media in navigating healthcare consumption experiences.

This study employs a dual qualitative approach of visual and textual analysis of 180 Instagram posts from female breast cancer patients and survivors who use the platform to narrate their healthcare consumption experiences.

This study demonstrates how visual storytelling on social media normalises hidden aspects of healthcare consumption experiences through healthcare disclosures (procedural, corporeal, recovery), normalising practices (providing learning resources, cohering the illness experience, problematising mainstream recovery narratives) and enabling digital affordances, which in turn facilitates social support among vulnerable healthcare consumers.

This study highlights the potential for visual storytelling on social media to address shortcomings in the healthcare service system and contribute to societal well-being through co-creative efforts that offer real-time and customised support for vulnerable healthcare consumers.

This research highlights that visual storytelling on image-based social media offers transformative possibilities for vulnerable healthcare consumers seeking social support in negotiating the challenges of their healthcare consumption experiences.

This study presents a framework of visual storytelling for vulnerable healthcare consumers on image-based social media. Our paper offers three key contributions: that visual storytelling fosters informational and companionship social support for vulnerable healthcare consumers; recognising this occurs through normalising hidden healthcare consumption experiences; and identifying healthcare disclosures, normalising practices and enabling digital affordances as fundamental to this process.

This study aims to investigate the effect of social media use on healthcare workers’ psychological safety and task performance and the moderating role of perceived respect from patients during public health crises.

To test the proposed moderated mediation model, a survey was conducted in 12 Chinese medical institutions. A total of 637 valid questionnaires were collected for data analysis.

The results revealed that psychological safety mediated the relationships between task-related social media (TSM) use and social-related social media (SSM) use and task performance. In addition, perceived respect from patients moderated the relationship between TSM use and psychological safety, as well as the indirect relationship between TSM use and task performance through psychological safety.

This study sheds new light on understanding how different types of social media use influence task performance in the context of public health crises. Furthermore, this study considers the interactions of healthcare workers with colleagues and patients and examines the potential synergistic effects of these interactions on healthcare workers’ psychological state and task performance.

Guided by the growing importance of social-mediated organisational communication, this study examines how communication professionals within healthcare organisations perceive and respond to the reputation impacts of social media on the organisation’s reputation. Although the healthcare sector finds itself in the midst of a (continually) transforming landscape characterised by large amounts of digital health (mis)information and an empowered “patient-as-consumer”, little is known about how professionals in this sector understand the changes and respond to them. Moreover, much extant scholarship on the topic is published in specialised health or medical journals and does not explicitly address the communication implications for healthcare organisations.

In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with communication professionals responsible for social media across eight hospitals in the Netherlands. The sample included two participants working as communication consultants/social media advisors for healthcare organisations. In all, 15 interviews were conducted.

Building on interviewee perspectives, the authors advance the CARE (Control, Access(ability), Responsive(ness) and Engagement) model of social-mediated communication, highlighting the dualistic characteristics of each dimension. This model is built upon a careful analysis of healthcare professional responses. In an always-on environment, understanding and managing the tensions within the authors’ model may be decisive to the reputation implications of social media use.

Understanding the tensions within each dimension lends a more nuanced perspective on the potential impact(s) of social media as experienced by professionals in the field. In shifting away from a binary, either/or approach, the paper contributes to explicating the complexities of a pervasive phenomenon (i.e. social-mediated communication) and its multifaceted impacts on the healthcare sector.

The advent of new technologies and change of patients’ behavioral patterns have triggered the provision of medical services through social media. Although the intersection between social media and health has received considerable research attention, there is little research on how health institutions implement social media strategy; thus a roadmap is required to navigate these technological initiatives. So, the purpose of this paper is to overcome this challenge by developing the Health 2.0 maturity model in the healthcare field.

To obtain this aim, the mixed method was applied in this research. In the first step, qualitative research method was used. In this step, along with comprehensive literature review, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the healthcare professionals to find the practices and capabilities of Health 2.0. In the second step, the proposed key dimensions (KD) were assessed and prioritized based on the views of the healthcare professionals using the quantitative survey method. Finally, by considering the architecture of Health 2.0 maturity model, the KDs were assigned to maturity levels based on their priority of implementation using a focus group.

The proposed maturity model is composed of six KDs and five maturity levels based on the Capability Maturity Model Integration architecture. The KDs, as well as their implementation order and weights in the proposed maturity model are presented as a roadmap for applying Health 2.0 effectively.

Employing the Health 2.0 maturity model enables health institutions to assess the current social media capabilities and guide them to select appropriate strategies for progress. Due to the descriptive nature of the proposed model, it allows managers to conduct process-based assessments regarding health 2.0 implementation.

Health 2.0 has been a recurring theme on the agenda of healthcare institutions, but no sensitive tool is available to measure its growth processes. This paper explores the much ignored but critically important subject of Health 2.0 maturity model and its implementation roadmap. The main contribution of this paper is to introduce an integrated roadmap containing the most important capabilities of Health 2.0. The proposed model is both descriptive and prescriptive in nature, and has a significant theoretical contribution to healthcare studies. This paper provides a mechanism to benchmark Health 2.0 efforts and to develop a progressive strategy that would improve its activities.

Empowered patients are allies to the healthcare system, especially in emergency situations. Social media use has emerged to be a major means by which patients interact with the healthcare system, and in times such as the current COVID-19 situation social media has to play an even greater crisis management role by empowering patients. Social media channels serve numerous beneficial purposes, despite them also being blamed for the spread of misinformation during this crisis. In this Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) focused case study, we will discuss the increasingly greater role being played by the social media in healthcare in the region and how that empowers not just the patients but the system as a whole. In the GCC region, the healthcare sector is found to reflect a steady growth, leading to an increased drive for empowering patients by lowering the barriers to effective communication and consultation through online media. As of today, social media has become an element of the telehealth infrastructure being deployed in the region. During COVID-19, patients are seen to leverage it pointedly for online health consultations thereby lowering the stress on the healthcare system and adding to efficiencies.

The paper aims to investigate the most influential social media information sources to trust in healthcare facilities. The article shows a valuable point of reference for understanding how social media becomes the casting of social capital.

This paper has taken 660 responses from the people who used social media for healthcare information in the mid of 2020 during the pandemic. The people were approached through different social media groups. The paper conducted structural equation modelling (SEM). The result has shown that with the instigating power of social capital where people put trust in social media information during pandemics.

The findings demonstrated that personal sources, government organisations and healthcare professionals are the most influential sources of social media. In order to effectively ensure the encompassing provision of COVID-19 health services, this article argues that social capital considerations establish trust between healthcare facilities seeking community to healthcare information providers.

This research has signified that social cohesion and concern for community welfare instigated people to engage in social media communication. The inherent social capital belongings influence people to trust the sources of health information from selected sources that appear on social media.

Healthcare policymakers may utilise this intense feeling of belongingness and cohesion of social capital and use social media platforms to spread health-related information.

The study shows social capital has the strength to entice people into healthcare-seeking behaviour. In this era, social capital is reformulated to digital social capital through social media and strongly affects people's trust.

The purpose of this paper is to predict Twitter satisfaction by healthcare professionals through integrating constructs of Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory, quality dimensions and usefulness.

Survey responses of 108 physicians from a variety of specialisations in the United Arab Emirates have been validated and analysed by means of partial least squares-based structural equation modelling method using smartPLS software.

Service quality has emerged as the most influential quality dimension that positively impact flow state and perceived usefulness of Twitter, while information quality, surprisingly, does not show any effect. The findings also indicate that flow state plays a significant role in shaping physicians’ satisfaction with Twitter. The study also enhances our understanding concerning the effects of perceived usefulness on flow state and satisfaction.

Understanding factors that influence Twitter satisfaction can help healthcare managers construct appropriate intervention strategies for maximising professional benefits of social media and minimising user resistance. This is important because top managers usually ratify traditional practices that are only of limited effect. Also, the findings help vendors to accentuate user’s concerns in addition to system functionalities in social media applications.

The paper is an early attempt to propose a model for social media success in a professional context in general and healthcare in particular. It also one of first studies that examine social media satisfaction through integrating contemporary information system success and acceptance models with flow theory.