Abstract

A plethora of social media applications are used by healthcare providers. However, despite the proliferation of social media in healthcare, its value remains unclear. This paper explores users’ perspectives on the value of social media in healthcare, and how outcomes resulting from its use are ascertained. Preliminary results indicate that healthcare providers see social media as a medium through which they can reach out to their target audience in order to create value that is often intangible and underpinned by benevolence. While many users are clear on the value they desire from the application, the issue of measuring its value is a grey area because many of the available measurement yardsticks have limited applicability. Further research is needed to validate the preliminary findings, and create comprehensive value evaluation criteria for healthcare social media.

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