Building Cancer Hospitals’ Reputed Brands through Health Education and Mobile Apps

Cancer hospitals implement communication initiatives to promote their brands, such as websites, patient portals, social media platforms, or mobile applications. However, they face different challenges: legal frameworks, patients’ requirements, and global competition. This paper analyzes how hospitals manage mobile applications to implement health education initiatives, allowing them to reinforce their relations with stakeholders and promote their brands. We conducted a literature review about cancer hospitals' brands (health communication, branding, health education, mobile applications), and then we carried out a quantitative analysis of how the 250 best cancer hospitals in the world managed their mobile applications for health education and branding purposes. We found that most cancer hospitals used websites (99,6%) and social media platforms (90,4%), but only a few of them managed general mobile applications for patients (52,8%) and mobile applications for cancer patients (7,6%). We concluded that most cancer hospitals mainly use applications for administration tasks and only focus on patients, constituting a reputational risk for these organizations.