Opportunities and Risks of the Use of Social Media in Healthcare Organizations

Abstract. The process of interaction between individuals, through the use of social media, is one of the most complex problems that theorists have had to analyse in recent years (Richards, 2007; Kolbitsch and Maurer, 2006; Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; ecc.).Social media tools are becoming important in healthcare, transforming it in the process. Today many organizations, in the health sector, are facing a challenge: they must either choose to allow their operators to use this new method of communication with patients and their families or forbid it. The rapid changes that the diffusion of social media has had in the communication processes would undoubtedly impose a drastic change: the use of social media allows an instant sharing of ideas, opinions, knowledge and experiences, creating a new “space-time” dimension that would be translated in a new way (additional) to "cure" the patient (Hawn, 2009). Although there are many benefits and promises from social media, several risks are associated with their use. The ambiguity related to legal and ethical issues (for example the patient’s privacy) of social media at the same time contains the enthusiasm related to the potentialities that social media offer. In this paper we are going to analyse the risks and benefits of social media perceived in healthcare. Through an empirical study conducted on a sample of Italian physicians and patients we are going analyse some items (measured with Likert’s technique) that will allow us to define an "utility function" to measure and compare what they perceive as beneficial and what they perceive as a limit. This work can be useful for managers of healthcare organizations to understand that, if the perception of the presence of Health organizations on social media by doctors and patients is positive, the challenge is due and it must not only be organizational but, above all, cultural (Normann, 1996).