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The overall purpose of this empirically validated research paper is to determine factors that impact the success of using social media channels by consumers for salvaging health-care information by integrating constructs of the information system (IS) success model, e-health service quality and perceived usefulness during pre- and post-COVID settings.

Online survey responses of 243 consumers for study 1 and 184 consumers for study 2 were validated using factor analysis to understand consumers’ attitudes toward social media use. Constructs from existing literature and theories have been extracted to develop the proposed model, which has been empirically validated through statistical tests. A paired-samples t-test was also conducted to compare the customer satisfaction mean of pre- and post-COVID conditions; and word of mouth (WOM) for pre- and post-COVID conditions.

The outcome of this study supports that service quality and information quality conclusively influence customer satisfaction of consumers for health-care information among respondents pre COVID, and service quality, perceived usefulness and information quality conclusively affect customer satisfaction of consumers for health-care information among respondents post COVID. Furthermore, the e-health service quality contributes noteworthy in shaping the consumers’ satisfaction with social media usage for study 2 and information quality for study 1. A paired-samples t-test revealed that the two groups behaved significantly differently for customer satisfaction and WOM in the two groups.

At prima facie, this study has a geographical limitation for the sample size. The respondents for the online research were from the urban suburb of Bengaluru, India. The data collection has not focused on any precise social media channel.

Identification and comprehension of constructs that influence consumer satisfaction related to social media usage for health-care information can assist health-care managers in developing appropriate strategies for consumers to maximize social media usage. Moreover, this study provides an insight into the consumer’s perception of using social media channels for seeking health-care information.

This study recommends an empirically validated model for the success of social media in a consumer setting for the health-care scenario. This research is a unique attempt that inspects social media satisfaction by adapting constructs from existing theories of the IS success model, e-health service quality and perceived usefulness.

This paper aims to use the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin to reveal new insights into the role and impact of social media in health-care settings.

With the help of Bakhtin’s constructs of dialogism, polyphony, heteroglossia and carnival, the power and influences of the social media phenomenon in health-care settings, are explored.

It is apparent from the in-depth analysis conducted that there is a delicate balance between the need to increase dialogue and the need to safeguard public health, in the use of social media for health-related communication. Bakhtin‘s constructs elucidate this delicate balance and highlight the need for health-care providers that use social media to find the right balance between these competing communicational priorities.

This paper advances a nascent theoretical approach to social media research. By applying Bakhtinian ideas to consumer health informatics, this paper has the potential to open a new approach to theorizing the role of social software in health-care settings. Stakeholders in digital health will find this paper useful, as it opens up dialogue to further discuss the role of social media in health care.

The purpose of this paper is to identify key social medial channels which pharmaceutical firms need to consider when desiring to understand consumer behavior, build, maintain and proactively manage relationships. Also, it proposes the application of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) sensitivity analysis algorithm to test the stability or robustness of the priority ranking. Specifically, this paper leverages performance sensitivity analysis to evaluate how small changes (perturbation) in the major objectives of the pharmaceutical relationship marketing (PRM) tactics within the social media environment will influence the ranking of the alternative course of actions.

This paper used AHP-based questionnaire survey to evaluate the relative importance of factors accounting for PRM and the impact of social media channels. The major objectives and the alternative strategies used were from literature reviewed. Interviews with senior managers were insightful and helpful in the wording, content and format of the questionnaire.

Customer engagement is the most important PRM tactic, followed by communication and trust. The performance sensitivity analysis carried out on the PRM tactics showed that the ranking associated with social media channel options remained robust or insensitive to small perturbations.

The data procured for this paper were based on one focal pharmaceutical firm. Convincing the same to grant an interview and late responding to the questionnaire was a great challenge.

Social media impact on pharmaceutical marketing relationship is important for pharmaceutical marketers. PRM bodes well with the social media environment. Pharmaceutical industry can build and maintain relationships with consumers through social media. Firms that leverage social media to enhance their PRM tactics will be viewed favorably in terms of trust, transparency, openness and honesty. The results provide pharmaceutical marketing managers with insightful and valuable information with respect to the role or social media impact on the PRM. The AHP model, objectives and their relative importance provide valuable information for managers on how to monitor the values that matters to customers the most.

This paper is one of the very few on the PRM and perhaps the first that examines social impact leveraging the AHP model. In addition, this paper contributes to the relationship marketing literature by leveraging a multi-criteria decision-making algorithm to prioritize the most important factors accounting for the PRM strategies.

This paper aims to uncover the predictors of information exchange in social networking for health (SNH) care.

Using two national studies of consumers in the USA, this research examines how trust and social connections influence information exchange. The empirical analyses use a two-stage estimation approach and structural equation modeling.

The results show that higher trust encourages information getting, while social connections encourage information giving. In contrast to previous findings, this study shows that trust does not affect information giving when social connections are included in the model.

This study focuses on the role of trust and social connections in predicting information exchange in SNH. Research on general social media use has explored the role of personalities in predicting use. While this study controls for demographic variables that correlate strongly with personality types that are significant predictors, future research can determine which of the big-five personality factors correlate with information exchange. While social media usage has been steadily increasing from 2005 to 2015, the authors are unable to track changes in social media activities in healthcare over time as this study uses cross-sectional data. Future research can use panel data that can track these changes.

First, managers of social networks can encourage individuals with expansive networks to share their stories, as they are more likely to offer information. Second, they need to build the trust of individuals before fully reaping the benefits of SNH. This issue is especially critical for SNH if medical practitioners and public health officials need to use SNH as a communication channel. Third, medical practitioners and public health officials may need to intervene when misinformation is prevalent in SNH.

Health-care providers and public health officials informed of information exchange predictors can modify their strategies in enacting health-related policies.

This research is the first to explore the links between trust, social connections and information exchange in SNH care. This research contributes to existing knowledge by identifying the important roles of trust and social connections and separate routes that these constructs influence information exchange.

Despite the prevalence of technology in health care, marketing research on social media in the birthspace is limited. The purpose of this paper is to explore how birthing women leverage social media for transformative well-being in the liminal context of birth.

A qualitative study of women who had recently experienced birth was undertaken. Thematic analysis of data from in-depth interviews reveals birthing women’s digital practices and social media capabilities for well-being in a liminal space.

Within the birthspace, women use social media and digital platforms in an effortful and goal-directed way for role transitions and transformation, curating self and other history, goal striving and normalizing experience. These digital practice styles facilitate consumer integration of the liminal digital birthspace and in situ service encounter enabling diverse value outcomes. Drawing on liminality and social presence theories, the authors interpret these practices as demonstrating three interactive liminal stages of suspending, comprehending and transforming. Multi-modality and rapid connection afforded by digital devices and social media platforms provide social presence (according to perceived immediacy and intimacy) enabling transformative well-being outcomes.

This study is unique, as it provides insights into the traditionally private health service experience of birth. Further, the authors extend the understanding of liminal spaces and use of digital technology, specifically for transformative outcomes, by proposing a framework of consumers’ digital practice styles for well-being in liminal spaces.

The emergence of Web 2.0 opened a new route for education to use the values derived from this development. The future of e-learning is social learning, where individuals can learn online due to the facility of social media. Social media such as online communities are places for social interactions between users. These social interactions are the way forward and can drive social support in an online context. This paper aims to explore the impact of these interactions

This study uses social support theory to explore the impact of social interactions on the internet on learning and education. The research uses a case study and investigates the health industry.

The paper explains the development in e-learning through social media and the emerging concept of social learning.

The contribution of this research is to emphasise social relationships of individuals in the internet and social interaction in online communities which enhance their learning qualities. The research drawn on social support theory describes social learning as a future for e-learning.

This work shows the results of a systematic literature review on biomedical text mining. The purpose of this study is to identify the different text mining approaches used in different application areas of the biomedical domain, the common tools used and the challenges of biomedical text mining as compared to generic text mining algorithms. This study will be of value to biomedical researchers by allowing them to correlate text mining approaches to specific biomedical application areas. Implications for future research are also discussed.

The review was conducted following the principles of the Kitchenham method. A number of research questions were first formulated, followed by the definition of the search strategy. The papers were then selected based on a list of assessment criteria. Each of the papers were analyzed and information relevant to the research questions were extracted.

It was found that researchers have mostly harnessed data sources such as electronic health records, biomedical literature, social media and health-related forums. The most common text mining technique was natural language processing using tools such as MetaMap and Unstructured Information Management Architecture, alongside the use of medical terminologies such as Unified Medical Language System. The main application area was the detection of adverse drug events. Challenges identified included the need to deal with huge amounts of text, the heterogeneity of the different data sources, the duality of meaning of words in biomedical text and the amount of noise introduced mainly from social media and health-related forums.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, other reviews in this area have focused on either specific techniques, specific application areas or specific data sources. The results of this review will help researchers to correlate most relevant and recent advances in text mining approaches to specific biomedical application areas by providing an up-to-date and holistic view of work done in this research area. The use of emerging text mining techniques has great potential to spur the development of innovative applications, thus considerably impacting on the advancement of biomedical research.

Local policies often prohibit care staff from online contact with the people they support. The purpose of this paper is to review the reasons put forward for this ban and seek explanations.

The paper examines relevant literature on the use of social networking by disabled and nondisabled people. This paper offers a critique of common policies and justifications and poses a challenge to those who impose such regulations.

The paper finds no support for current policies.

The authors found only a limited amount of research in this area, and research findings were not commonly utilised by policy makers.

Policy makers and regulators need to take a more rigorous and person-centred approach to rule making in respect of social media.

A widespread ban on the use of social media in communications between staff and the people they support is exposed as paternalistic and exacerbating infantilisation and exclusion rather than seeing disabled people as digital citizens. Regulators and those with responsibilities for safeguarding need to adopt a more empowering and person-centred approach.

This paper will only make a difference if regulators and those with responsibilities for safeguarding adopt a more empowering and person-centred approach rather than the fear-based blanket prohibitions that have applied to date.

Drawing on the taxonomy of patient empowerment and a sense of community (SoC), the purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors that impact the intention of the individual to continue using online social health support community for their chronic disease management.

A survey design was used to collect the data from multiple online social health support groups related to chronic disease management. The survey yielded a total of 246 usable responses.

The primary findings from this study indicate that the informational support – not the nurturant support such as emotional, network, and esteem support – are the major types of support people are seeking from an online social health support community. This research also found that patient empowerment and SoC would positively impact their intention to continue using the online health community.

This study utilized a survey design method may limit precision and realism. Also, there is the self-selection bias as the respondents self-selected themselves to take the survey.

The findings can help the community managers or webmasters to design strategies for the promotion and diffusion of online social health group among patient of chronic disease. Those strategies should focus on patient’s empowerment through action facilitating and social support and through creating a SoC.

An innovative research model integrates patient empowerment and a SoC to study patient’s chronic disease management through online social health groups to fill the existing research gap.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an improvised sustainable health-care model by integrating best practices, innovations and new dimensions to the present public health-care system – National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) – for improving the health status of the bottom of pyramid (BoP) in India.

The contribution of NRHM in ensuring the availability of health-care services and improving health indicators has been assessed. Some unique proven models of excellent health-care services and innovations have also been considered in designing an improvised health-care model. The empirical context takes the use of case study research methodology. The data have been extracted from various relevant papers, reports and websites.

Despite substantial augmentation in health infrastructure and human resources, increased local engagement and technology integration, the progress in health indicators during the NRHM has not been fairly better than that before. The present paper provides an improvised model that integrates all the potential stakeholders such as Government, Private health-care services providers, pharmaceutical and insurance companies and BoP community itself to ensuring 5As rather than 4As (Prahalad, 2004) in rural health care.

This study has relied mainly upon the secondary sources of data and some published case studies. The model is a hypothetical framework designed exclusively for rural setups of India.

The study shows the ways and invites all the stakeholders to come forward and build hybrid partnerships not only to develop society but also to develop sustainable BoP markets and earn profits.

The paper brings forth the aspects of achievements and limitations of NRHM in improving BoP health status, and it develops an improvised model to achieve the BoP-health objectives.