How can hospitals engage with patients on social media?

So this episode is about use of social media by hospitals and authorities, health authorities like CDC, and Ministry of Health, and so on.

So first of all, I want to introduce the 10 things hospital need to know about social media. As you know, the smartphones are becoming part of our life. Every day, a lot of people watch information or search information on the mobile phones. They check the emails on the mobile phones. So with that time, mobile phones are getting more and more often used rather than computers, PCs, and tablets. The next thing which I want to emphasise is the visual representation of data.

That means our brain can 60,000 times easily remember or recognise and understand the information represented in the form of figures and tabs rather than writing the words and asking audience or readers to read all the information which you want to present. So therefore, it’s much, much recommended, or highly recommended for hospitals and health authorities to provide the information they want in visual form. And the third thing which I would like to emphasise is elderly group is fastest-growing demographic on Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp, or any other social media. What that means? It means people are– when they feel lonely, they really want to get in touch, get communicated, get to know each other.

They need to share the information, share their experience, share their feelings. So they find mobile phone is like one of the best tool, best friend for them to get connected with the rest of the friends. It doesn’t matter where their friends really located. Therefore, you see elderly patients are like target population for the hospitals in order to get engaged, in order to get– attract with the services and facilities available in the hospital. And the fourth thing is the number of devices connected to internet now exceeds the number of humans on earth. That means we are connected by our tab, by computer, by mobile phone. And there are a lot of other sensors, which are, again, connected to internet.

So in this way, a huge amount of data is collected. Although that is a completely different topic how those big data can be analysed and make sense out of the data. But in this presentation, what I want to emphasise is people are definitely connected online. So you can disseminate the information which you want in a few minutes or even seconds to millions of people, to millions of your followers. So spending of information is not any problem anymore.

Then, another attractive thing, which play a very important role for patient engagement or patient attachment to the hospital is redeeming a digital coupon, a strategy for patient cost saving and adherence. Meaning you can provide some ad and give some code saying if anyone use this code in our hospital, say, 5% deduction will be done for general checkup, or 5%, 10% discount will be given for x-ray or any other facilities provided. Or the facility which hospitals want to introduce to the local population. Also, the important thing is social media influence 93% of shoppers final purchase decisions. What that means? Meaning people are really into social media and they want to see what is available.

And they just go with the information they have on their hands rather than going and seeing for big holdings or seeing like TV advertisement or newspaper advertisement. And the seventh thing which I would like to inform is about users research product and service online. Definitely nowadays, whatever you want you just go to internet and just searching for that rather than asking someone or rather than going– like traditionally, what we used to do, we use to follow whatever parents used to do or what elders used to do. But now that is not the case. People just search it and see with this what’s available and just utilise that. And targeted content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing.

This is very key point for especially hospitals who wants to target the population which is more likely to visit or more likely in need of facilities from the hospitals. So again, elderly are like one of target population for them. Therefore, they need to not only target them. But they need to customise the content. So they cannot provide general information as advertisement. They need to say, OK, if you are 40 years unable, you need to do this investigation. If you are female and about 40, you need to go through so-and-so sort of investigation. If you are male about 60 years, these are the things.

So you see, now they need to target precisely rather than just saying, OK, come and do endoscopy or come and do like ultrasound of prostate. It doesn’t work now. Then comes the consumers that receive emails, newsletters from companies or hospitals spent 82% more with those companies. That means definitely the weekly or monthly email or sending newsletters really works. And that is the reason why in day-to-day life, we see huge amount of newsletters and emails we get from various companies. Also, 70% of people surveyed claim that they would learn about hospital through articles rather than direct advertisement. You see, this makes, again, a very key point for hospitals to invest on research, invest on publications.

Because now people became so smart, they want to see the research evidence. They need to see like what the hospital is up to, how advanced it is. So it’s just not like going there and treating and coming back, no. Now, the patients are seeing which is the most advanced hospital in the city, who is publishing, who is at the international level. So this is like one more key point for hospitals to get into research and to publish stuff, what they are doing, so that people know. Because now the patients are not seeing the advertisement, but they are seeing the research you have done in your hospital.

So after seeing these things, now what I want to show is I want to show few YouTube links I have published on the slides. You can click and have like Mayo Clinic Social Media Guidelines, Boston Children’s Hospital Facebook page, so that you will get actual idea of how hospitals are using social media. And then, health authorities. How CDC perspective on role of social media in communicating clear food risks. Because not everything is good. If you remember your first lecture, I have talked about good things, bad things, and ugly things. So again, I want to emphasise everything what is available on social media cannot be a good. You should keep that in mind.

Therefore, I have kept the second link about Ebola and social media hysteria and the culture of spreading misinformation. I don’t know the reason why, like a lot of people are like prone to disseminate misinformation. It might be just for publicity or just to create hoax or panic among the population. It might be for fun. We don’t know the real reason. But on day-to-day life, if you use Facebook or WhatsApp or Twitter, you get a lot of messages which are really misinformed or incorrect. So therefore, every time when you get any information online, you should be sure the authority who is publishing that and what is the need for that person to publish such information.

And at the last, I would like you guys to watch all the videos which I have put the links. And then, please write one-page essay on opportunities and challenges of hospitals to get into social media. Thank you so much.