By now, the challenges faced by health care and pharmaceutical organizations when it comes to government regulations on social media are well know.

But a recent blog post from SmartBlog on Social Media’s Merritt Colaizzi suggests there may be some hope on the horizon. Despite the added layer of complexity resulting from government regulation, several standout health care and pharmaceutical companies are helping to get the social media ball rolling, including:

• ZocDoc puts patients in touch with physicians, allowing them to book appointments online, as well as provide ratings.

• Hello Health allows patients to create a profile and add a doctor to their “team.” The patient and doctors are then connected via e-mail, IM or video chat.

• TIAA-CREF participates in teal-time discussions and offers advice about retirement on myretirement.org, Facebook and TC_Talks on Twitter (pictured below). It even has its own Apple iPhone app.

Tell us about your own standout story of social media marketing in health care.