Reframing health care through social media

Abstract

This teaching case presents the story of the Hospital Campus (HC) project and its effort to reframe health-care services for the elderly through the adoption of social media. In a world of global ageing, in which an increased number of elderly patients will be cared for by a shrinking number of workers, a primary challenge is how to use technology to provide better and more efficient services for the elderly. The HC campus project focuses on how to involve information technology-illiterate elderly patients and their social networks in the design and use of social media services to improve their quality of life. In describing the development of the project, we focus on the elderly patients’ needs and the activation of their social circles through the engagement of peers in the purposeful use of social media. The HC project illustrates how innovative services occur as a result of the participation of users and their social networks in the management and design of health-care services, the importance of the intermediary role as the ‘evangelist’ and the need to tailor the adoption of social media to address individual needs.