An Empirical Study on Patients’ Acceptance of Physician-Patient Interaction in Online Health Communities

et al. 2020

Preprint

Background Online healthcare platform (OHP) is a new form of medical treatment, which solves the problems of unbalanced distribution of medical resources and expensive medical treatment in China. Especially under the epidemic of COVID-19, OHP has greatly reduced the medical pressure of the hospital and the risk of cross infection. Methods This paper uses evolutionary game theory to analyze behavioral strategies and their dynamic evolution in the promotion of OHP, and then numerical simulations are carried out with the help of program compilation. Results The results demonstrate that: (1) both the stricter qualification inspection of doctors and the more investment in information protection promote the participation of doctors and the use of patients; (2) with a higher initial probability of doctors joining, the possibility for patients in using OHP and platforms to provide standardized online healthcare services becomes higher; (3) if the initial probability of patients using is higher, the possibility for doctors to participate OHP and platforms to provide standardized online healthcare services raises; (4) the trend of doctors joining the platform is affected by factors, such as registration cost, time cost, reputation loss and so on; (5) the tendency of patients in using online healthcare is mainly decided by the cost. Conclusions Based on theoretical analysis, this article takes the Spring Rain Doctor OHP as an example to verify the game results. Therefore, OHP should attach importance to the inspection of doctors and the protection of privacy information, and strengthen the publicity in remote places. At the same time OHP can promote the active participation of grassroots doctors, and set a reasonable evaluation mechanism, so as to popularize online medical treatment among patients further.

Section: Commission On Doing a Good Job In Internet Diagnosis And Conmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In China, due to the huge population and uneven distribution of medical resources, a large number of hospitals are severely crowded [5]. Due to the increase in medical demand and government policies, OHP is developing rapidly in China [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Tripartite Analysis of Online Healthcare Platforms: Evidence from Spring Rain Doctor in China

Xia

et al. 2020

Preprint

“…By browsing the doctor's homepage on the platform, patients can view the doctor's information and understand the doctor's training, professionalism and the effectiveness of the treatment [11]. As for doctors, they can improve the utilization of their time by answering patients' questions in their spare time through OHP [7]. Doctors can also actively use OHP to obtain economic and social benefits [12].…”

Section: Commission On Doing a Good Job In Internet Diagnosis And Conmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Tripartite Analysis of Online Healthcare Platforms: Evidence from Spring Rain Doctor in China

Cao

et al. 2020

Preprint

Background: Online healthcare platform (OHP) is a new form of medical treatment, which solves the problems of unbalanced distribution of medical resources and expensive medical treatment in China. Especially under the epidemic of COVID-19, OHP has greatly reduced the medical pressure of the hospital and the risk of cross infection. Methods: This paper uses evolutionary game theory to analyze behavioral strategies and their dynamic evolution in the promotion of OHP, and then numerical simulations are carried out with the help of program compilation. Results: The results demonstrate that: (1) both the stricter qualification inspection of doctors and the more investment in information protection promote the participation of doctors and the use of patients; (2) with a higher initial probability of doctors joining, the possibility for patients in using OHP and platforms to provide standardized online healthcare services becomes higher; (3) if the initial probability of patients using is higher, the possibility for doctors to join OHP and platforms to provide standardized online healthcare services raises; (4) the trend of doctors joining the platform is affected by factors, such as registration cost, time cost, reputation loss ; (5) the tendency of patients in using online healthcare is mainly decided by the cost.Conclusions: Based on theoretical analysis, this article takes the Spring Rain Doctor OHP as an example to verify the game results. Therefore, OHP should attach importance to the inspection of doctors and the protection of privacy information, and strengthen the publicity in remote places. At the same time OHP can promote the active participation of grassroots doctors, and set a reasonable evaluation mechanism, so as to popularize online medical treatment among patients further.

“…With the development of the Internet, emerging online health communities allow doctors to fully use their spare time and medical knowledge to serve remote patients [1]. Online health communities also allow many patients to obtain online medical services for a variety of diseases through online platforms [2]. Through the Internet, online health communities can solve or alleviate medical resource shortages and doctor-patient disputes to a certain extent [1][2][3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Online health communities also allow many patients to obtain online medical services for a variety of diseases through online platforms [2]. Through the Internet, online health communities can solve or alleviate medical resource shortages and doctor-patient disputes to a certain extent [1][2][3]. Communications between doctors and patients posted on online health communities contain a variety of valuable information that can help establish knowledge-based online support for online patients [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Effect of Market Conditions on Price Premiums in the Online Health Community

Han

2020

IJERPH

Online health communities allow doctors to fully use existing medical resources to serve remote patients. They broaden and diversify avenues of interaction between doctors and patients using Internet technology, which have built an online medical consultation market. In this study, the theory of supply and demand was adopted to explore how market conditions of online doctor resources impact price premiums of doctors' online service. Then, we investigated the effect of the stigmatized diseases. We used resource supply and resource concentration to characterize the market conditions of online doctor resources and a dummy variable to categorize whether the disease is stigmatized or ordinary. After an empirical study of the dataset (including 68,945 doctors), the results indicate that: (1) the supply of online doctor resources has a significant and negative influence on price premiums; (2) compared with ordinary diseases, doctors treating stigmatized diseases can charge higher price premiums; (3) stigmatized diseases positively moderate the relationship between resource supply and price premiums; and (4) the concentration of online doctor resources has no significant influence on price premiums. Our research demonstrates that both the market conditions of online doctor resources and stigmatized diseases can impact price premiums in the online medical consultation market. The findings provide some new and insightful implications for theory and practice. returns for doctors, decreasing health disparities for society as a whole, in addition to providing other benefits [5,[9][10][11]. Currently, many online health communities provide similar online services for doctors and patients, such as Good Doctor and Chunyu Doctor in China, and Quickrxrefill, MDproactive, and Livehealthonline in the USA.Compared with doctors in physical hospitals, in online health communities, doctors have more options to choose service provision at their convenience [12]. Online medical consultation, as one of the most popular and useful service functions, is provided for patients who need professional medical diagnosis and do not visit hospitals [13]. Doctors in online health communities have the pricing power for the online medical consultation service [12]; they can set price for the online medical consultation service based on their capabilities and circumstances [14,15]. Many studies have examined factors affecting service price and returns [11,12,16], such as doctor reputation, professional title, and hospital rank. Recent studies have mainly focused on the relationships between service prices and doctors' personal characteristics, which is necessary but insufficient. Online health communities have built an online medical consultation marketplace for doctors and patients [17,18]. In this online market, doctors with strong medical skills can obtain high service fees above the average price, to charge price premiums and receive higher returns [19,20]. In our study, the research context, Good Doctor (Haodf.com), is one of the leading and typica...