Determining Social Media Components for Scalable Healthcare

The issue of access is an essential concern for any health care policy formulation and reform, especially in emerging nations such as India. It has been recognized that all people deserve access to similar levels and quality of health care services. Penchansky and Thomas (1981) recognized five dimensions of access to health services as affordability, acceptability, accommodation, availability and accessibility. Seventy three percent of Indian population lives in the semi-urban and rural areas. The strong mismatch of ratio of hospitals to patients, rising costs of health care, rapidly changing demographics, increasing population and heightened demands in pricing for technological healthcare usage in emerging economies necessitate a unique health delivery solution model using social media. The prominent gaps in the healthcare delivery among the population which has greater disease burden might be relaxed using social media tool. Based on research we framed the key question of this paper as what are the expectations of consumers or users of social media for healthcare. The authors have tried to find how these factors depend on social media for healthcare.