Is Social Media A Taboo For Health Care CIOs?

Bangalore: Technology is the life and blood of every industry; the same holds true for healthcare. The days when it was considered just a doctor-patient relationship are long gone. Now that the awareness and the knowledge has increased amongst the masses, the term healthcare is as widely used as practiced and understood. People are becoming more health conscious, more inquisitive and thus more updated. This is where technology plays a vital role, making the information more usable, handy, informative and accessible. The IT section helps in managing the data, controlling the pharmacy, automation of clinical systems, physiological monitoring- the list goes on. Thus the key role of a CIO in the health care department lies in systematic management of the work force, installing and learning about patient accounting system and making the business successful and widespread through networking.

In this era, we have a fair idea of health regulations, diet, medicines, controls, precautionary methods and new discoveries through internet. We use applications, social media channels and smart phones to keep ourselves updated. These social media channels make a virtual bridge between the patients and the doctors. It practically saves time, sort of getting counseling and diagnosis without physically meeting the physician. This connectivity is the responsibility of the networking, and thus falls under the duty of a CIO in the healthcare department.

With more than one hundred million users of Twitter and Facebook, it is easier to reach the masses through these social media forums. This kind of forum is also used by the top notch CIOs to discuss, market the new ideas and to launch as well, more or less making their agenda heard on an open house. In this particular subject, Vala Afshar CMO and Chief Customer Officer, Enterasys Networks enlightened on huffingtonpost.com that there is a lack of principal voices of CIOs from the health care sector. The CIOs from the education and technology sector are the most noticeable in these forums.

The small number of CIOs from the healthcare department in these forums shows a blocked path of medical marketing, and hinders the virtual doctor-patient relationship. As nowadays people are looking to stay healthy, these forums provide a medium for the doctors to keep the patients informed and fit. This particular sort of communication should be triggered by the CIOs of this department at the earliest, so as to sprout benefits for both the consumer and the provider; in this case the people and the medical facility. If this slow adoption of social media is because of the deteriorating budgets, then the CIOs must consider it as more profitable and yielding in future for the people and the health care field.