According to scenario, there are three social media applications involved, the YouTube video player, discussion forum and recommendation system. As illustrated just now, the YouTube video player plays the video about what the hospital looks like. The player is embedded in the homepage of NUH’s official website. The following Figure 1 is a snapshot of what the screen will look like. The added YouTube video player is where the red arrow points. The remaining part is from the original website. Here is the web link: http://www.nuh.com.sg/.
Figure 1 YouTube player added
The discussion forum, serves as a platform for potential patients to approach the professional doctors and previous patients for consultation. The layout of the forum is almost the same as other forums except that the patients’ discussion forum is not separated from the website, that is to say, the forum is part of the whole website. The following Figure 2 & 3 are two imaginary pictures of the appearance for the discussion forum.
Figure 2 A Discussion Forum added
Figure 3 Discussion Board
Finally, the recommendation system, it is just like the rating and comment system adopted by Amazon. When you click on each doctor’s name, the doctor’s qualification information as well as the rating rated by patients will be presented on the web page. Under that, the comments given by the patients will also be listed there, just as what Amazon has done with each of its books. An imaginable picture is given as in Figure 4.
Figure 4 Doctor’s recommendation system
Another new function added to the site is that other than using the static map to show the location of the hospital, an intelligent Google real time map is used for patients to search and retrieve the exact route from his home to the hospital.
Figure 5 Google Map added
Technically, to integrate these social media applications into the existing website, we need to do a mashup to combine the plain text searching function with Google Map. The mashup combines data from multiple public sources in the browser and organizes it through a simple browser user interface, that is to say, when the user types in the address of his home, the mashup can search for the information corresponding to user’s query and display the result on the current web page. Java APIs will be used and these will include Java Data Objects to make sure the persistence of the information, a JavaHelp to help the users to easily get started with our new application and a Java Naming & Directory Interface as well to ensure all the information are listed in a directory.
To sum up, we believe that with these three social media applications integrated into the current website, potential patients will find it much more convenient to get the information they want to know. Social media makes it possible for patients to have a real feeling about the hospital even without going to the hospital in person. That is also what we want to achieve with the help of social media.