Social media and e-health development in Lithuania

Abstract

Health care sector modernizations and innovations are greatly depending on societal participation as any other public share sector. The goal of the research presented in this paper is to evaluate user inclusion to e-health development and reveal possible trends in adapting social media tools for e-health services development. In order to achieve the goal a background analysis via scientific literature review was carried out. Case study on virtual e-health platforms in Lithuania and quantitative empirical data analysis followed the literature review. Research finding revealed that e-health developers are not active in including health care service users in e-health development, but the users, on the contrary, are using intensively social media tools and creating virtual e-health projects based on innovative e-participation and selfgovernance mechanisms. The trends in health care user`s activities influence positive e-health development. The limitation of this research is that the research was oriented only towards health care service user approach in e-health development supported by social media and virtual communities; the influence of other stakeholders on e-health development is not the focus of this paper. The findings of the research are valuable for e-health developers in order to create user-friendly ehealth systems and successfully implement them. The paper presents original research on social media role in Lithuania’s e-health development.