The Impact of ICT and Online Social Networks on Health and Social Services (original) (raw)

How Health Care moves on the Web: the case of Health Social Network

The paper focuses on health social network, as websites where patients can find medical information at a number of different levels – since services offered range from emotional support to self-tracking and to clinical trial access. To monitor them, in 2005 the World Health Organisation (WHO) founded the Global Observatory for eHealth (GOe), with the scope to certify health-care-on-the-web through an ethical code (HON, Health On the Net). It has been realized in order to facilitate the distribution of useful and reliable information on the web among citizens. Moving from the eight HON’s principles, with the addition of a new area based to a set of items referring to a cost-benefits analysis, we have carried out a research aiming at investigating potential relations between the rating and the economic benefit gained by an eHealth website. In addition, through a discriminant analysis it has been possible to weigh the attributes (referring both to the HON certification and to the cost-benefit analysis) due to the positioning of a website.

Social Media: The Evolution of e-Health Services

Lecture Notes in Social Networks, 2014

The chapter analyses e-health services provided by different Social Media (collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual games and virtual social worlds and video-chat) and introduces a Hybrid Cloud E-health Services architecture (HCLES) able to provide open, interoperable, scalable, and extensible services for all the e-health activities. It integrates the potentialities of Skype for a direct communication and synchronous data transmission among people with the cloud perspective of Social Media services.

The impact of social networks on health care

Social Network Analysis and Mining, 2017

Our work examines the risks and benefits stemming from the evolution of Social Network Services (SNSs) in the healthcare domain. More specifically, we study the impact of specific health-oriented social networks such as PatientsLikeMe. Social networks evolved to a ubiquitous part of daily life and WEB 2.0 paved the way for the internet to be used as a method of interactive communication and information immersion. Health SNSs have the strength to influence healthcare services delivery and information availability supported by emerging technologies which track, gather and quantify real-time medical data from patients. SNSs support publicly provided information to patients, offering them the power not only to educate themselves but take part in the decision-making process of their health. On the other hand, healthcare stakeholders have gained access to new information which can help to cut costs, progress research, and improve the healthcare system. However, apart from the unambiguous benefits of SNSs, several risks are identified such as patient confidentiality violation. By incorporating the volumes of data collected by websites like PatientsLikeMe and other WEB 2.0 applications, the patient-industry partnership could ensure better products at lesser costs. Web 3.0 is the next step toward a heath care ecosystem which will evolve out of micro-contributions creating the most accurate representations of medicine for the stakeholders.

Initiating Social Networks in E-Health Services to Support Empowerment (Preprint)

2018

UNSTRUCTURED Extending e-Health services with social networking through Web 2.0 is the main concern of this paper. This paper discusses how Web 2.0 applications will help healthcare providers extend and enhance their services by involving and empowering their customers. A survey was conducted in Malang, East Java, Indonesia to reveal expectations of potential users towards healthcare services that can offer empowerment through information, knowledge, and experience sharing in social media. The survey revealed that customers highly appreciate various features in e-health services such as consultation online, sharing in social networks, and empowerment in enriching their personal health records. Based on the survey, a prototype of an e-health system incorporating the expected features was developed for future research.

Exploring the Social Networks' Use in the Health-Care Industry: A Multi-Level Analysis

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021

The application of social networks in the health domain has become increasingly prevalent. They are web-based technologies which bring together a group of people and health-care providers having in common health-related interests, who share text, image, video and audio contents and interact with each other. This explains the increasing amount of attention paid to this topic by researchers who have investigated a variety of issues dealing with the specific applications in the health-care industry. The aim of this study is to systematize this fragmented body of literature, and provide a comprehensive and multi-level overview of the studies that has been carried out to date on social network uses in healthcare, taking into account the great level of diversity that characterizes this industry. To this end, we conduct a scoping review enabling to identify the major research streams, whose aggregate knowledge are discussed according to three levels of analysis that reflect the viewpoints of the major actors using social networks for health-care purposes, i.e., governments, health-care providers (including health-care organizations and professionals) and social networks’ users (including ill patients and general public). We conclude by proposing directions for future research.

Ehealth: Market Potential and Business Strategies

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2006

Due to the economic and social priorities afforded health services in the United States, research on new delivery modalities such as the Internet is gaining in popularity. Claims of the Internet's potential range from a promise to revolutionize the fundamental way health care is delivered to a tool for empowering patients through enhanced interaction with providers (Rice, 2001). Even though a great amount of attention has been given to e-health activity, the preponderance of publications to date has focused on the Internet as a source of health information. However important this form of e-health is, this type of service simply does not face the same constraints that must be addressed by those actually delivering health care services or tightly regulated pharmaceutical products. In this paper, we examine e-health by focusing explicitly on the delivery of health care products and services. Our examination of e-health activity is guided by two broad research questions. First, we ask what the potential is for the development of online health care services by examining its potential in major health care service and product sectors. Second, based upon case studies of two online health service firms, we seek to understand the emerging strategies of firms that are attempting to enter the health care market with an entirely online approach. Our examination of current e-health trends, as well as our two case studies, demonstrates the tremendous potential for health-related commercial activity on the Internet. However, our examination of the barriers facing ehealth from the US health system also pointed out the almost insurmountable challenges. We therefore conclude that a "click and mortar" model may perhaps be the optimal strategy for e-health.

The Competitive Forces Facing E-Health

International Journal of Healthcare Information Systems and Informatics, 2006

Superior access, quality and value of healthcare services has become a national priority for healthcare to combat the exponentially increasing costs of healthcare expenditure. E-Health in its many forms and possibilities appears to offer a panacea for facilitating the necessary transformation for healthcare. While a plethora of e-health initiatives keep mushrooming both nationally and globally, there exists to date no unified system to evaluate these respective initiatives and assess their relative strengths and deficiencies in realizing superior access, quality and value of healthcare services. Our research serves to address this void. This is done by focusing on the following three key components: 1) understanding the web of players (regulators, payers, providers, healthcare organizations, suppliers and last but not least patients) and how e-health can modify the interactions between these players as well as create added value healthcare services. 2) understand the competitive forces facing e-health organizations and the role of the Internet in modifying these forces, and 3) from analyzing the web of players combined with the competitive forces for e-health organizations we develop a framework that serves to identify the key forces facing an e-health and suggestions of how such an organization can structure itself to be e-health prepared.

Social Networks – A New Way of Communicating in Healthcare

Sixth International Scientific Conference ITEMA Recent Advances in Information Technology, Tourism, Economics, Management and Agriculture

The advancement in IC technologies has provided health sys­tems with newer and better means of reaching large populations. This pa­per investigates how social networks facilitate health message-sharing on the Internet and provide users with numerous tools to create, publish or share various content formats. The literature review points out two basic motives for the use of social networks by sick people: “information sup­port” aimed at obtaining information and increasing knowledge about the disease and its therapies by sharing experiences with other users, and “social and emotional support” enabled by digital environments which encourage empathy among online peers allowing each person to access help from different social media while controlling the level of disclosure of their identity and condition. The authors of this paper conclude that a deeper understanding of shared content and user behavior in online set­tings can help communicators improve health literacy, raise community aw...