1. Managing Information Neil Seeman and Karen Born Social Media in Healthcare: It’s So Five Years Ago?
promise of “citizen science” (via, for example, Patientslikeme. organizations is still in its infancy in Canada. Still, there are lessons
com’s ALS Lithium Study, where patients organized their from the areas where social media has been better developed for
own clinical trial about the supposed benefits of lithium for hospitals as they try to do broader public engagement. The CSC
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). report (at p. 5) was correct when noting, “Our finding of high
A 2012 report “Ready to Interact: Social Media Use by U.S. levels of social media usage for the purposes of marketing, commu-
Social Media in Healthcare: Hospitals and Healthy Systems” from Computer Sciences Corp.
(CSC), a United States technology consulting firm, focused on
the use of social media in the United States for communica-
nications and brand management are very consistent with other
research, which has found that the vast majority of institutions
use social media for unidirectional communication.” Within the
It’s So Five Years Ago? tions and marketing and brand development, as well as the use
of social media tools by hospitals. The survey drew on a small
sample size (36) of US healthcare organizations that already
small (early adopter) sample CSC discussed, 70% of the hospi-
tals reported that they use social media to engage patients and
consumers; yet really when one delves deeper, the reviewers find
used social media (this being a small sample set of self-selected only one-way engagement. Again, one must put this in context:
Neil Seeman and Karen Born leading organizations), so one needs to be careful about giving only a small subset of Facebook users adopts the most interactive
its findings too much weight: the main finding (not statistically features, such as video chat. Definitions are important here. Even
significant) was that the most common purpose for the use of self-broadcasting (i.e., sending out continuing medical education
social media was for promoting health and wellness. information via Twitter, for which the Mayo Clinic is a leader) is
Indeed, in the Canadian context, some hospitals are using more social, or at least more engaging, than the pre-1997 modality
social media tools such as Facebook or YouTube for this of sticking static information on a website.
purpose; but given Canada’s broader system and policy context
of a publicly funded healthcare system, Canadian hospitals are
being creative and using these social media tools primarily for “ ocial media has offered the promise of
S
purposes such as public education, staff engagement and quality “citizen science.
”
improvement. Social media tools are cheap and, in a current
cost-constrained context, offer an approach for hospitals to
communicate and engage with various audiences. One-way engagement by hospitals and other organizations
is still very much how the Canadian scene is characterized, but
there is an interest in investigating further into the use of rich
“ espite the fact that social media is
D online data by hospitals for quality improvement and patient
not innovative today, the reach of social safety. This is the real promise of social media, to improve the
N
ot so long ago (2007), sites such as Twitter were Web into social and non-social is absurd today. The entire Web bottom line in healthcare – patient outcomes. But let’s be clear:
relatively free of “spambots” and robotic marketers is social. As you are reading this, you have the ability to “share”
media tools to the public by healthcare social media is like the telephone. It is yesterday’s invention. The
promoting or demoting brands. Facebook was it on Facebook or LinkedIn, “tweet” about it or email it to your organizations is still in its infancy in main lesson the CSC report indirectly showed is that healthcare
innocent and not in the business of collecting “friends” and contacts. Google, Amazon, Twitter – sites you use Canada. ” is a laggard. What else is new?
more than two billion “likes” every day and selling the data. every day– are, in fact, social in functionality. In spite of how
It’s a different world today. Five years ago, using social media to pervasive these tools are in our personal and work lives, hospitals The Canadian context finds many other players engaged in Reference
engage was innovative. Not so today. In fact, it is questionable and healthcare providers remain reticent to embrace social media social media. Healthcare increasingly spans far beyond acute CSC. October 2012. Ready to Interact: Social Media Use by U.S.
Hospitals and Health Systems. Retrieved February 10, 2013. http://
that the return on investment of engagement using social media to improve the main focus of the healthcare sector – patient care hospitals, and social media tools are being used by profes- assets1.csc.com/health_services/downloads/CSC_Survey_Social_
ever lived up to the hype. Despite much attention paid to the communication and care. sional groups (e.g., the Ontario Medical Association), educators Media_Use_by_U.S._Hospitals_and_Health_Systems.pdf.
role of social media in the United States presidential campaigns (e.g., medical school and teaching hospitals), healthcare providers
About the Authors
of 2008 and 2012, the return on investment of social media (e.g., Quinte Pediatrics) and other organizations (e.g., the Ontario Neil Seeman is founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of The
in that context is dubious – that is, whether younger people “ ealthcare is still (yawn) focusing on
H Hospital Association) to connect, communicate and engage both RIWI Corporation, a global data capture company that works
voted in “record numbers” and this translated into a statistically within the healthcare context and beyond. There is a very small but with high data-sensitivity clients around the world, is senior
yesterday’s innovation: social media.” resident and CEO of the Health Strategy Innovation Cell at
meaningful upswing in voting for this demographic. vocal community of “activated e-patients” who are leveraging using
Massey College, and teaches knowledge transfer over the
This is not to dismiss the power of social media in health- social media to advocate for change – often simple change, such Internet at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Health Policy,
care, just to put it in the context of innovation. The rest of One must be clear: despite the promise of social media as being able to email your physician (a 20th-century tool used in Management and Evaluation. He is an author of four academic
industry and the investor community, from Silicon Valley to in healthcare, while extremely powerful for philanthropic every other service sector). Nevertheless, this community remains policy books and adjunct faculty at the Dalla Lana School of
New York to London, is talking about “Big Data” – harvesting campaigns and for gleaning information (from open source one of healthcare insiders, speaking primarily to each other, with Public Health and at Ryerson University, in Toronto, Ontario.
and making sense of exabytes of information (five of which are conversations on sites such as Twitter) about potential rapid little measurable impact.
Karen Born is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Health Policy,
being created every 10 minutes) that get produced daily on improvement events (RIEs) of value to the community of care, Despite the fact that social media is not innovative today – that Management and Evaluation, Faculty of Medicine, University
the Web. Yet healthcare is still (yawn) focusing on yesterday’s it has shown no demonstrable benefit to clinical outcomes. That was the second generation of the Web; we are now well into the of Toronto, and with the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St.
innovation: social media. Technically, the idea of splitting the may change with new evidence. Social media has offered the third – the reach of social media tools to the public by healthcare Michaels, in Toronto.
62 Healthcare Quarterly Vol.16 No.1 2013 Healthcare Quarterly Vol.16 No.1 2013 63