Last year, a highly respectable group of individuals representing a diverse group of healthcare organizations contributed to a book published by HIMSS — "Applying Social Media Technologies in Healthcare Environments."

The contributors represented large healthcare systems, statewide public health departments, community hospitals, clinics, physicians, researchers and a patient. However, the stories of innovation using social technologies to solve business challenges will also be appreciated by nontechies alike.

Actually, it is the nontechies who are the most important in the process of creating solutions, because it is they who feel the day-to-day pains of miscommunications, unengaged patients, and/or inefficient/ineffective processes.

A sampling of their social and related technology use includes:

See Clearly Vision has patients complete satisfaction surveys on iPads before they leave the office, and they compare these results to online ratings and reviews and then discuss them during monthly meetings. When they do see negative reviews or comments, the practice administrator and physician both receive an alert and they reach out that day to see what could be done to resolve the issue.

They have found patients commenting online are so surprised to get a call that they remove, without prompting, their negative comments. See Clearly has also seen a decrease in the number of negative online reviews and an increase in positive testimonials. Nearly 10 percent surveyed are reporting that they heard about the practice online.

Suburban Hospital has built up a strong social media presence and has leveraged their social channels to aid in recruitment of a talented workforce. The human resource department places ads on LinkedIn and Facebook and uses the social intelligence applications to help identify potential candidates for positions across the organization.

This allows recruiters to spend less time trying to source candidates and more time interviewing and closing the hire. The results are that spending on traditional advertising has been reduced by 30 percent and productivity has increased.

Intermountain Healthcare wanted to engender loyalty throughout the "gateway" healthcare experience of new moms and provide a convenient forum for women to interact with clinicians and other new moms. They built an Intermountain Moms audience and content starting with Facebook and expanded to other social sites where new moms were gathering.

Then, they took the next step of creating an app to improve convenience and access to tools such as: an announcement creator, immunization tracker, week-by-week pregnancy updates, health tips, a baby name generator, a countdown clock, a video library a pregnancy diary and more.

As these "new moms" became "moms" with children, they added pediatric content and resources. In 2014, Intermountain Moms had more than 30,000 likes, and its average reach was more than 200,000 each week. It is the fastest growing of all of Intermountain's social communities.

Children's Medical Center Dallas responded to the families who had little success finding an online network for support, especially one mother of a child with a rare disorder. They worked with their patients and families to build and expand the network which is now available to all patients and families.

It is integrated with their electronic medical record and other patient-facing technologies on an enterprise portal. They find the most successful departments are those in which the physicians reinforce the need to sign up.

The Arizona Department of Health Services has used social media to build more meaningful connections with the community in online social environments that they choose. They leveraged these channels to engage the state's population in the development of plans for registration, application and approval processes to comply with the new Arizona Medical Marijuana Act.

The popularity of the medical marijuana initiative, and its subsequent passage, spotlighted the needs for increased transparency and access to public meetings beyond those who could attend in person. Educational content, meeting announcements and updates were posted to all social channels and online video streams of actual meetings were posted to YouTube and on the director's blog.

The blog alone included 150 medical marijuana posts and 2,471 related interactions/comments, and traffic to the blog increased 785 percent over the six-month period between the first post about the voter initiative and its subsequent passage.

Researchers at Partners Healthcare wanted to use Facebook as a means to communicate with teens, regularly administer the Asthma Control Test (ACT) and send alerts when asthma control was poor. The goal was to decrease hospitalizations and emergency department visits.

They created a private Facebook page and invited study participants to join. Patients are engaged with content that reinforce key messages, such as taking their medications and closely monitoring their condition, and a link to the ACT on a secure site is posted at regular intervals. Results are expected to be released in the next couple of months.

Perhaps, these examples will spark an idea of how social tools can be used as innovative solutions to challenges in your healthcare organization's processes.