Exploring the Peer Effect of Physicians’ and Patients’ Participation Behavior: Evidence from Online Health Communities

A Systematic Review of Online Medical Consultation Research

Online medical consultation is a form of medical service that facilitates interactions between patients and doctors online, offering significant utility and value. This review aims to retrieve, screen, and analyze articles related to online medical consultations, formulating a theoretical framework and proposing future research directions. According to PRISMA guidelines, a systematic search was conducted in Web of Science, EBSCO, ScienceDirect, PubMed, and Scopus, retrieving a total of 4072 English records on 16 December 2023. After rigorous screening, 75 articles were included in this review. Among these, 8 articles focused on patients utilizing online medical consultation platforms, 5 on doctors participating in online medical platforms, 18 on patients' choice of doctors, 12 on doctors providing services, 7 on online reviews of patients, 14 on service quality for patients, 8 on rewards to doctors, and 11 on the spillover effect between online and offline services. These themes comprise the theoretical framework of the starting point, process, and outcomes of the online medical consultation system, providing a comprehensive understanding of the field and a foundation for future research.

Patient Journey Toward a Diagnosis of Light Chain Amyloidosis in a National Sample: Cross-Sectional Web-Based Study

BACKGROUND

Systemic light chain (AL) amyloidosis is a rare and multisystem disease associated with increased morbidity and a poor prognosis. Delayed diagnoses are common due to the heterogeneity of the symptoms. However, real-world insights from Chinese patients with AL amyloidosis have not been investigated.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to describe the journey to an AL amyloidosis diagnosis and to build an in-depth understanding of the diagnostic process from the perspective of both clinicians and patients to obtain a correct and timely diagnosis.

METHODS

Publicly available disease-related content from social media platforms between January 2008 and April 2021 was searched. After performing data collection steps with a machine model, a series of disease-related posts were extracted. Natural language processing was used to identify the relevance of variables, followed by further manual evaluation and analysis.

RESULTS

A total of 2204 valid posts related to AL amyloidosis were included in this study, of which 1968 were posted on haodf.com. Of these posts, 1284 were posted by men (median age 57, IQR 46-67 years); 1459 posts mentioned renal-related symptoms, followed by heart (n=833), liver (n=491), and stomach (n=368) symptoms. Furthermore, 1502 posts mentioned symptoms related to 2 or more organs. Symptoms for AL amyloidosis most frequently mentioned by suspected patients were nonspecific weakness (n=252), edema (n=196), hypertrophy (n=168), and swelling (n=140). Multiple physician visits were common, and nephrologists (n=265) and hematologists (n=214) were the most frequently visited specialists by suspected patients for initial consultation. Additionally, interhospital referrals were also commonly seen, centralizing in tertiary hospitals.

CONCLUSIONS

Chinese patients with AL amyloidosis experienced referrals during their journey toward accurate diagnosis. Increasing awareness of the disease and early referral to a specialized center with expertise may reduce delayed diagnosis and improve patient management.

Online health community-An empirical analysis based on grounded theory and entropy weight TOPSIS method to evaluate the service quality

Introduction

With the enhancement of people's health awareness and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in recent years, people's demand for online health information continues to expand, and online health communities (OHCs) have developed rapidly. However, the service quality of OHCs is uneven, and problems such as content quality, privacy disclosure are increasingly prominent. It's of great significance to establish normalized OHC service quality evaluation standards and develop effective evaluation tools and methods for the improvement of OHC service quality.

Material and Methods

Based on the grounded theory, the raw materials obtained from semi-structured interviews were coded in three stages to construct a service quality evaluation system for OHC. Through empirical analysis, the rationality and effectiveness of the evaluation system were verified. Then six representative Chinese OHCs were selected and their service quality was evaluated by the entropy weight TOPSIS method.

Results

The service quality evaluation system of OHC was constructed which includes 4 first-level indicators and 16 second-level indicators. The weights of the first-level indicators from large to small are content quality, emotional experience quality, interaction quality and function quality. Among the second-level indicator weights, the top three are perceived cost reasonableness, content professionalism and effectiveness of interactive content.

Conclusions

The indicator system is reasonable and effective and the evaluation method has strong applicability and operability. This study will provide theoretical guidance for community platform operators and relevant departments to design effective evaluation mechanism of OHC service quality, offering a reference for decisions and policymakers.

Why should I consult? The impact of social support on patient consultation in online healthcare communities

The COVID-19 epidemic put the traditional healthcare system and offline consultation method under strain. Patient consultations through online healthcare communities (OHCs) provide patients and physicians with a more convenient and secure route. Based on the social support theory, this study explores the impact of three dimensions of social support from physicians—information diagnosticity, source credibility, and emotional support—on patient consultations in OHCs and their moderating effect on patients’ compliments. We utilized Python Spiders to retrieve data from Haodf.com and gathered 2,982 physician reports. The model uses OLS regression with fixed effect estimations. The results show that these three dimensions of social support are positively impacted by consultation. Furthermore, patients’ compliments weaken the positive relationship between the three dimensions of physicians’ social support and patient consultations. This study contributes to the literature on social support theory in OHCs by exploring the physicians’ social support dimension and its impact on patient consultation. Moreover, this study makes practical contributions to physicians and platform administrators in OHCs.