See on Scoop.it – 2- HEALTHCARE SOCIAL MEDIA by PHARMAGEEK

A recent episode of the BBC documentary series Business Boomers focused on the amazing growth of Amazon, tracking its development from garage-based small business to multinational giant.

It was filled with an array of interesting tidbits but arguably the most memorable was a clip from a 1994 episode ofTomorrow’s World.

In it, the earnest presenter – surrounded by a collection of very bulky and very beige computers – explained how “something called the internet” was set to revolutionise the availability of information.

It was a stark reminder of just how far digital communication has come in a short time; a reminder that is particularly important within healthcare.

• Foreword to the HSJ and Nursing Times Social Media Pioneers supplement
• Social Pioneers interactive graphic
• The mobile friendly list of our Social Media Pioneers
• Now you’ve signed up, the real work begins
• Dean Royles: The path to picking our Social Media Pioneers
• Download a free PDF of the supplement
• Health chiefs flock to Twitter to talk to staff and the public

A digital age

Those the NHS is recruiting today – the leaders of tomorrow – will never have known a world without the internet.

Paediatric and young adult patients will fall into the same category. And soon enough we will have a generation not only of “digital natives” but of social media natives.

‘Online networks seem likely to offer solutions to many of the current communication challenges the health service is facing’

It all means healthcare practitioners and organisations are likely to have no choice but to engage with social media. It is where their patients and colleagues will expect to have conversations, and so not to be there would simply not be sustainable.

The growing influence of social media in healthcare is associated with the sustainability of the NHS in a much broader sense, however.

Online networks seem likely to offer solutions to many of the current communication challenges the health service is facing, and provide an extremely positive reason for the growing influence of social media in healthcare.

Take sharing concerns. In the aftermath of the Francis report, much attention has been focused on ensuring staff can speak out without fear and safe in the knowledge that their worries will be suitably investigated.

Twitter provides a simple way to encourage this sort of open environment: a nurse tweeting his or her chief executive a concern seems far more transparent than other potential methods. It is no coincidence that Twitter has provided a natural home for the Nursing Times Speaking Out Safely campaign.

Online connections

There is also frequent talk of the importance of the NHS sharing knowledge and innovation more effectively. Here too social media networks are making a tremendous difference, allowing healthcare professionals to build connections both inside and outside their own organisations.

WeNurses is a tremendous example of this, bringing together nurses from across the world in Twitter conversations. Knowledge and views are being shared, and in some instances huge and valuable professional networks being built.

Let us not fall into the trap of thinking it is only healthcare professionals who are serving to increase the influence of social media in the NHS, however.

‘Patients have been the trailblazers, making electronic connections with fellow sufferers of a condition and coming together to raise concerns about standards of treatments’

In many ways, it is patients who have been the trailblazers (as our list of Social Media Pioneersdemonstrates). They began by making electronic connections with fellow sufferers of a condition, and continued by coming together to raise concerns about the standards of treatments at particular institutions.

Surely the next step will be for those working within the health service to fully employ social media to converse with service users?

This again will address many of the communication challenges currently being placed in front of health service managers: the question of how to build openness and a genuine dialogue with patients that is based on listening.

Twenty years ago, the internet was the new development. Few could now imagine our lives without it. It seems likely that, in 20 years time, we will be saying the same thing about social media. It has already influenced the health service – but it is only just getting started

See on www.hsj.co.uk