Harnessing social media for health information management

The remarkable upsurge of social media has dramatic impacts on health care research and practice. Social media are reshaping health information management in a variety of ways, ranging from providing cost-effective ways to improve clinician-patient communication and exchange health-related information and experience, to enabling the discovery of new medical knowledge and information. Despite some demonstrated initial success, social media use and analytics for improving health as a research field is still at its infancy. Information systems researchers can potentially play a key role in advancing the field. This study proposes a conceptual framework for social media-based health information management by drawing on multi-disciplinary research. With the guidance of the framework, this paper presents related research challenges, identifies important yet under-explored research issues, and discusses promising directions for future research.