Healthcare social media for a social innovation: “the key to improve a collaborative model of organizing, transforming doctor-patient communication”

Sructured Abstract Purpose –This paper analyses together information technologies and health, to address the question of how social networks may, with knowledge sharing to patients, doctors, health care stakeholders, provide a new vehicle to build new emerging “smart organizations”. The purpose of this paper is to explore with a conceptual approach how social media (Facebook) can be used strategically to promote social innovation. The evolution of the Information Technologies opens, today, new organizational scenarios also in the healthcare systems: the virtual revolution announces a new model of society in which healthcare organizations must change radically managerial imperatives, the structures, the processes and organizational cultures; if they want to survive they must be able to penetrate in emotionality of persons (Normann, 2006). The health care organizations, complex adaptive systems, must become open and collaborative systems, capable of developing deep partnerships with patients, their families and the community benefits from offered services, improving thus the effectiveness and efficiency of medical care. To achieve this, it is necessary to create places, especially virtual, where new “distinctive” knowledge is created, a knowledge that spreads through relational assets that are established between the human components. The communication process, therefore, takes a central role, both in the operator-user relationships and in the operator-operator relationships. Design/methodology/approach – We implement an approach in which patients are active participants in their own care and we develop a model more collaborative and human that challenges dogmas of communication deeply held inside health organizations to create a "new value". The research topic is very complex; therefore, the empirical analysis has been a key point to address it. The data were collected through a pilot project at the national level, which involved 1500 people, including doctors, members of different health care organizations, and patients. Originality/value – The pilot project, starting from the existing data in the literature on the use of virtual communication and of social networks in health care organization, brings to light the fact that today health care organizations are using Facebook as a showcase, without exploiting its true potential. The paper identify to what extent Italian hospitals use social media and if the use of social networks such as communication systems in health care organization improves the human relationship and communication between the patient and the health care system. In fact, replacing medical text cryptic with a natural language, enhanced, where possible, by audio or video recordings, it is possible 277 to maintain the specific terminology needed to identify possible pathologies, reducing the ambiguity. Patients and doctors are linked “anywhere and anytime”. Healthcare organizations that implement communication systems, using Facebook, may benefit from the ability of this to give a voice to patients, to communicate fast, to be near to the patients, to develop a "new image" of “social hospitals” that is of smart organizations . Practical implications – This methodology puts in evidence the need to reaffirm and reshape "the closeness and distance" between healthcare organizations and individuals. Patients today have a "digital identity", spend their free time online in social networks, they have energy, enthusiasm and ability to find on-line solutions to their pathologies, they speak the language of the computer, they love the virtual interaction. And it’s the same for doctors: a new generation, “always on-line” (Veen and Vrakking, 2010) who is connected, content-centric, computerized, community oriented. In this scenario hospitals seem to be becoming aware of the benefits social media could offer but they are still rather sceptical about how Facebook can be used. The challenge is due and it must be not only organizational but, above all, cultural (Normann, 1996).