SI: Spring_2014

The use of social media within healthcare has definitely been slower than other industries, but it is making progress. Many healthcare professionals and institutions have been active online for years and at one of the major healthcare industry events - This industry uses healthcare informatics daily...social informatics is tracking.

Pharmaceutical companies generally lag in embracing social media compared with other industries, a new report concludes, missing an opportunity to improve relationships with consumers. The IMS Institute for HealthCare Informatics, a Parsippany-based provider of health care data, said of the top 50 pharmaceutical companies globally, nearly half actively participate in social media while only 10 use all three social networking services - Facebook, Twitter and YouTube - for health care topics.

This article caught my attention because my original search focused on how social media can be leveraged for outreach efforts of public libraries, but Dave Fleet took a different standpoint. THe article raises an important point that I think a lot of librarians fail to realize- Not all social media sites work for all libraries. Toward the end of the article Dave Fleet wrote "Social Media isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to your problems" and I have to say that I completely agree. It's important to assess the organizational culture before embracing social media technology because if your Board or fellow coworkers are resistant to change, your efforts might not be rewarded.

I do agree one should assess the organizational cultural before the acceptance of a social media site. Its good to know how your coworkers feel about the implementation of social media technology. There may be some coworkers who are unwilling to change, but one should also keep in mind of the good aspects of accepting a social media website. For example, a librarian can share information about: events, news, readings and book sales. https://twitter.com/nypl

"I do agree one should assess the organizational cultural before the acceptance of a social media site." That is an issue facing my industry as they are slow to adopt social media as a means of communication. Communications and both internal and external have led to major indictments, fines, and jail in the past.

This article talks about social informatics within a different field (healthcare), investigating physicians, nurses and other health care professional's knowledge about information systems security. It's remarkable to see how they evaluate what they know and how they react to the security features. Reflecting on the awareness of healthcare professionals and their information system security which informs them if there is a possible breach in the security. As I was reading this article, it reminds me of my personal life. When I purchased a new car and I saw a signal light up on my dashboard (for example an image of a cylinder with fluid), I was completely clueless as to what was wrong with my car (If I read my manual to get more familiarized with the different functions in my car, I would know what each signal represents).

Another way information technology is used within healthcare https://www.diigo.com/item/image/4lax3/0un9

This article is relates to social informatics as it discusses about how a group of Indonesian kindergarten children reading skills were evaluated, showing that how the use of (technology) computers assist in improving their skills to read. As I was growing up I didn't have the option to use a computer in school at the age of 5, so its nice to see how using technology is helping to make improvements in education.

This article provides a brief understanding of social informatics. It discusses about the fundamentals of information science in relation to information technology; the relation of people and ICT. What effect does (information) technology have on us? What are the consequences or benefits of using (information) technology?

This article is through Rutgers libraries so I apologize if the link doesn't work correctly. The title of my post is the title of the article though so it should be easily searched through the library website. This article attempts to differentiate between the two fields and offers several points, namely through Gurstein, that offer why both fields cannot or should not be viewed as the same, though it is admitted that both fields use similar approaches to study. Pg. 38 and onward try to define each field and really show what they are at their core. The reason that this article caught my eye however is namely because many of the posts that we had last week that tried to explain SI seem to fall into the Community Informatics field as well. While I'm not sure I fully subscribe to the fields being completely separate I do think that their similarities offer us a good point to begin discussion.