This has opened doors to social media and networking, which can be very effective tools in marketing and maintaining a positive client base for health care organizations and product providers alike. It seems to be an invaluable source for communicating with stakeholders, sharing thoughts, ideas, and viewpoints, posting updates, and collaborating with colleagues and consumers for better outcomes. It is believed that social media and networking will be a great source of communication for providers and consumers alike for many years to come. Forums such as Facebook and Twitter only seem to be the beginning of this new realm of communication for health care. Basically social networking and media will play a key role in the future of health care as we know it. Social networking will likely offer health care organizations and professionals the ability to improve care coordination, develop clearer and more accurate content, accelerate drug discovery, enhance performance of customer service in insurance providers, and advance continuing education for health care providers in the near future (Selzer,…
Social media, like the postal letter, telephone and e-mail before it, has revolutionized the ways in which people communicate in the modern world. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have hundreds of millions of users that have chosen this medium to communicate with the world at large. Blogs, Wikis and podcasts further contribute to the dominant communication tool of the modern world: social media. This new form of communication has been quickly adopted by professionals of all varieties, but it has specific implications for physicians and related healthcare professionals. As the ability of a physician to effectively perform their job, and for the patient to respect the physician’s advice, is dependent on the trust between them, at what point does the physician’s private life in terms of social media begin to affect his or her professional life? It is estimated that 59% of American adults searched for medical advice online in a 12 month period. Included in these searches were many reviews of a physician’s conduct and abilities (McKay, 2010). As this new form of communication becomes increasingly more common, medical professionals will need to take precautions to insulate themselves both legally and ethically, and to retain the trust of their patients that is vital to the effective functioning of their job.…
Physicians have used social media now more than ever. C. Lee Ventola’s article Social Media and Healthcare Professionals: Benefits, Risks, and Best Practices, discusses the various ways physicians use social media and the benefits it provides for them:…
“Privacy seems to encompass everything, and therefore it appears to be nothing in itself” (Solove, 2008, p. 7). It is an oversimplification to define privacy as all what an individual owns. With the evolution of new technologies nowadays, it is very hard to define privacy because it varies from one person to another and from one culture to another (Solove, 2008). With the rise of social networks during the last decade, new views about privacy started to emerge due to its special mechanism in sharing information. Social networks enable users to instantly share information, thoughts, photos, products and videos with the many users in the network at once. Unlike other means of communication, the information in social networks can spread to hundreds of users in seconds. Then, the users who received the information may share it among their network, and then further to other networks, which will end up in spreading the information to millions of people in no time, just like a chain reaction. This new mechanism of sharing, which is becoming faster every day, raised new concerns about privacy among individuals and organizations. In spite of all these concerns about the personal privacy on the social networks, social networks websites are the most visited websites in the internet. For example, Facebook has reached 901 million monthly active users in April, 2012 (Hachman, 2012). Although social networks enables an easy sharing of private information about individuals or low profile information about organizations, individuals and organization should not be afraid of using social networks due to privacy concerns, and instead they should be more public and utilize the social network.…
Social networking mainly involves social interactions among different people from various parts of the world through an established platform of social networks. Mostly, social relations is based on people who, for instance, share beliefs, interests, backgrounds, activities or real life connections. Social networking is primarily web-based; therefore, users interact over the internet by use of instant messaging, emails, facebook, twitter and many other social web sites. Social networking is central to interactions, both business and social, in today’s world with many people converging on social network sites. It facilitates interaction of people, exchange of ideas and promotion of products; but such simple, casual relation in an electronic environment also has its drawbacks such as lack of privacy, moral degradation of teenagers, cyber-bullying, decreased productivity, spearheading of crime, and conveyance of false information. In this excerpt, I am going to discuss about these negative effects of social networking.…
Social media requires individuals to access the Internet. Three years ago, more than four out of five Canadians were using the Internet (Statistics Canada, 2013). In addition, the use of social media applications, such as Facebook and Twitter, has increased almost ten percent in a two-year span (Statistics Canada, 2013). It is apparent that the use of social media is on the rise and GetWell® recognizes the significance of this widely used resource. In fact, health care providers have already utilized technology with patients through online posting pages, communicating through live streaming conversation, and through recorded dictation (Kolmes, 2012). Social media has opened a door to communicating with others, both professional and personal, in the comfort of one’s own home or anywhere they else choose. GetWell® interactive webpage has many different applications to connect with others across the world who suffer from…
Technology is one of the most influential of the profound changes taking place in the twenty-first century. The easy access, use and dissemination of new technologies has increased the importance and benefits of social networking. People are expanding their ability to communicate with other groups more quickly and efficiently. However the use of social networks has changed how people communicate, their ways of conducting relationships, and led in some ways the loss of our privacy.…
Social networking sites are not good for today’s society particularly because social networking sites have very limited privacy, influence cyber bullying, and have an impact on a person’s future. Proving that social networking sites have led people to using less face-to-face communication, sites have become one of the world’s most dangerous hobbies without having to even physically interact. Social-networking sites prove more of a distraction than a useful tool. The inundation of friend requests and insignificant news feeds on sites like Facebook eat up valuable time that could be spent solidifying contacts in person. "The most effective networking is face to face," says Stanford business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer. "There's no substitute for real human contact. It's less personal online." Nothing has changed the internet more than the rise of social networking sites. Before social networking, the Internet was full of interesting information, but there was little opportunity to contribute a person’s ideas or participate in intellectual discussions.…
Social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, are online services that allow users to share information and interact with one another. According to an online usage report conducted in 2009 by Nielsen, approximately 70% of internet users are posting information, often including photos, about themselves on social networking sites. While social networks indeed serves as a convenient tool to integrate…
Social media websites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have become the most popular places people visit on the Internet, with two out of three Americans using social media sites, which is about two thirds of people who use the internet in the United States, or nearly one hundred and fifty million people (eMarketer, 2011). The healthcare industry is also not left behind in this as social media sites also serve as a growing source of health care information, and Facebook is the preferred source of health information for those who use social media sites for health purposes (Dolan, 2011).…
When most people hear the term social network, they automatically think of online social network. That is because online social networks, also known as social networking sites have exploded recently in popularity. Sites like Facebook, Orkut, Myspace and LinkedIn account for seven of top twenty most visited websites in the world. For many users especially the fully wired net generation online social networks are not only a way to keep in touch but a way of life. In addition to the socializing, it can be used as tool for education, business, learning etc. Like every other form of technology, it also has its own drawbacks. The drawbacks range from simple waste of time, negative effect on children and teens to privacy theft, cyber stalking, hacking, misuse of database, identity theft, illegal activities and some forms of terrorism as well. Presently there are over 300 networking sites in existence. Thus, each competitor tries to be one up using latest technologies, attractive features etc.…
In the article “Risk Heath Care Professionals Face with Social Media- Think before You Tweet” by Stacey L. Gulick, it is brought to the attention of the readers that there are many risks associated with social media and healthcare. When physicians are using Twitter they must be careful not to advise people/patients and should be general with explanations of disease processes. The providers should use generalized medical information and…
According to statistics, 40% of 8 to 18 year olds spend 54 minutes a day on social media sites. 36% of people surveyed listed social networking as the "biggest waste of time," above fantasy sports, watching TV, and shopping. When alerted to a new social networking site activity, like a new tweet or Facebook message, users take 20 to 25 minutes on average to return to the original task. In 30% of cases, it took two hours to fully return attention to the original task. 42% of Internet users play games like Farmville or Mafia Wars or Candy Crush on social networking sites.…
Many inventions have come up due to the rapid changing of technology. Social networking is the greatest invention of technology in general and the Internet in particular that has created a new aspect of modern life. Among these social networks, Facebook is the most popular with millions of users all over the world. As these social networking sites become more integrated, they can be not only a positive force but also a negative one in human life. While social networking offers some advantages for some people, others believe that there are more dangers than benefits which they can get from these visual societies.…
You are putting out information about your name, location, age, gender, and many other types of information that you may not want to let others know. Most people would say be careful, but no one can be certain at any given time. As long as people can know who you exactly are, then some can find ways to do you in.…