JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Social media is becoming widely used by individual researchers and professional organizations to disseminate research evidence in healthcare. Despite its increasing popularity, few social media initiatives consider the theoretical perspectives of how social media works as a knowledge translation strategy to impact research use.

Objective:

The purpose of this paper is to build a preliminary theoretical explanation of how social media works as a knowledge translation strategy for healthcare providers, policy makers, and/or patients to inform their healthcare decision making.

Methods:

We developed this framework using an integrative approach that first involved reviewing social media initiatives and theories on social media studies, knowledge translation, and behavior change. We then analyzed empirical studies on factors that influenced the use of social media and its messages and strategies used for promoting research use via social media. Through this iterative working process, we developed the Social Media for ImpLementing Evidence (SMILE) framework.

Results:

The SMILE framework explains the process though which social media is used by healthcare providers, policy makers and/or patients to promote the use of evidence in healthcare decision making. The framework has five key constructs: co-creation, developers, recipients, context, and triggers. For social media to be effective in enabling users to use research evidence in their decision making, the framework proposes that developers must work together with target recipients and co-create the messages and delivery strategies. Recipients’ use of the messages are influenced by the virtual-technical, individual, organizational, and system contexts, and can be activated by three triggers: sparks, facilitators, and signals.

Conclusions:

The SMILE framework can be used to explain the factors influencing the use of social media messages, as well as guide the development of social media interventions in healthcare. More empirical studies of social media initiatives are needed to test the propositions of this framework.