Walsh L., Hyett N., Juniper N., Li C., Rodier S. & Hill S. (2021) The use of social media as a tool for stakeholder engagement in health service design and quality improvement: A scoping review. Digital Health. DOI: 10.1177/2055207621996870
This scoping review summarizes how social media is used by health services, providers, and consumers to inform health service design and quality improvement. An advisory group of stakeholders provided advice throughout the review process. Studies of any health service stakeholders, in any health setting, where social media is utilized for communications, user populations, and quality improvement are included in the review (N=40). Deductive qualitative content analysis was used to understand results from each study. Included studies involved health service organizations, clinical and non-clinical providers, young people, people with chronic illness/disability, and First Nations people. Twitter was the most common social media platform among the studies. The researchers developed a typology of social media use in design and quality improvement with nine different models of use. Results demonstrate the ways in which social media is used as a tool for stakeholders in health service design and quality improvement. Different models of use are identified and may be suitable for organizing user populations, activities, and stages of the quality improvement cycle.