Physicians' active engagement is a critical part of sustaining online health communities (OHCs) development. Gamification design can be leveraged to invoke physicians' gameful experience, better ...motivating their engagement in OHCs. However, it can also create inequality of economic returns among physicians, causing harm to these communities. Drawing on this operational paradox, this paper empirically examines both positive and negative effects of gamification on physicians and the contingent role of disparity in professional seniority on their engagement and inequality of economic returns, to advance knowledge of such practices. Although gamification design engages physicians and increases their income, the results indicate increased economic inequality among the physicians as a consequence. Considering physician's higher professional seniority in the same department, it weakens the positive effect of gamification design on their engagements but strengthens such effect on economic inequality. Managers are advised to carefully plan their gamification design in order to promote physician engagement in OHCs and avoid the related paradoxes.
•We research how doctor services provided via online channels impact their performance offline.•Do channels substitute or complement one another?•We also investigate the role of reputation in ...influencing doctors performance offline.•We test how the channel effects change with doctors online and offline reputation.
The emergence of online health communities broadens and diversifies channels for patient-doctor interaction. Given limited medical resources, online health communities aim to provide better treatment by decreasing medical costs, making full use of available resources and providing more diverse channels for patients.
This research examines how online channel usage affects offline channels, i.e., “Online Booking, Service in Hospitals” (OBSH), and how the channel effects change with doctors’ online and offline reputation.
The study uses data of 4254 doctors from a Chinese online health community.
Our findings demonstrate a strong relationship between online health communities and offline hospital communication with an important moderating role for reputation. There are significant channel effects, wherein written consultation complements OBSH (β=3.320, p<0.10), but telephone consultation can be a readily substitute for OBSH (β=−9.854, p<0.001). We also find that doctors with higher online and offline reputations can attract more patients to use the OBSH (βonline=0.433, p<0.001; βoffline=2.318&2.123, p<0.001). Third, channel effects fluctuate, relative to doctors’ online and offline reputations: doctors with higher online reputations mitigate substitution effects between telephone consultation and OBSH (β=0.064, p<0.01), and doctors with higher offline reputations mitigate complementary effects between written consultation and OBSH (β=−1.586&-1.417, p<0.001).
This study contributes to both knowledge and practice. This study shows that there is channel effect in healthcare, websites’ managers can encourage physicians to provide online services, especially for these physicians who do not have enough patients.
Objectives: The Internet and social media are revolutionizing how social support is exchanged and perceived, making online health communities (OHCs) one of the most exciting research areas in health ...informatics. This paper aims to provide a framework for organizing research of OHCs and help identify questions to explore for future informatics research. Based on the framework, we conceptualize OHCs from a social support standpoint and identify variables of interest in characterizing community members. For the sake of this tutorial, we focus our review on online cancer communities.
Target audience: The primary target audience is informaticists interested in understanding ways to characterize OHCs, their members, and the impact of participation, and in creating tools to facilitate outcome research of OHCs. OHC designers and moderators are also among the target audience for this tutorial.
Scope: The tutorial provides an informatics point of view of online cancer communities, with social support as their leading element. We conceptualize OHCs according to 3 major variables: type of support, source of support, and setting in which the support is exchanged. We summarize current research and synthesize the findings for 2 primary research questions on online cancer communities: (1) the impact of using online social support on an individual's health, and (2) the characteristics of the community, its members, and their interactions. We discuss ways in which future research in informatics in social support and OHCs can ultimately benefit patients.
Purpose: The goal of this project is to investigate how online health communities can improve patient-physician relationships by providing social support and patient empowerment.
Theoretical ...framework: Nowadays, on online health forums, patients can connect with other patients and healthcare professionals and share knowledge and experiences. However, there is a dearth of research on how patient-physician relationships might be improved via online health communities.
Design/Methodology/Approach: In this analytical study, a sample of 61 individuals receiving treatment in Jordan's private hospitals were given a questionnaire via two of the most popular health communities' Facebook pages.
Findings: The findings showed that while patient empowerment had no impact on the patient-physician connection, computer-mediated social support had an impact on that relationship. These findings support the need to suggest Jordanian online health community models that might strengthen this kind of engagement.
Research, Practical and Social Implications: Online health community providers need to be aware of the tactics they should use in these communities to strengthen the patient-physician relationship and integrate these efforts into patient treatment. Additionally, these communities can help medical practitioners ensure that patients receive the appropriate information and type of support.
Originality/Value: As online health groups grew, so did the number of patients who relied on them for information and emotional support. Although the majority of studies focused on this type of support, little is known about how it affects the patient-physician interaction.
Taking an institutional logics perspective, this study investigates how “internet-informed” patients manage tensions between the logic of personal choice and the logic of medical professionalism as ...they navigate treatment decisions and the patient-doctor relationship. Based on 44 semi-structured interviews with members of an online health community for people with diabetes, this study finds that patients exercise a great deal of agency in evaluating healthcare options not only by activating the logic of personal choice but also by appropriating the logic of medical professionalism. Furthermore, patients are strategic in deciding what community advice to share with their doctor or nurse depending on the healthcare professionals' reaction to the logic of personal choice. In contrast to many previous studies that emphasise patient consumerism fuelled by information on the Internet, this study provides a more nuanced picture of patient-doctor relationship engendered by patients’ participation in online health communities.
•OHCs promote a logic of personal choice over treatment among patients.•The logic of personal choice may clash with the logic of medical professionalism.•Patients assess both OHC and professional advice by appropriating medical professionalism.•They are strategic in deciding what OHC advice to share with their doctor or nurse.•Patients can benefit from OHCs without harming their doctor-patient relationship.
When seeking advice online about health concerns, forums dedicated to medical themes are increasingly becoming an appreciated source of information for many individuals. In online health communities, ...patients can ask questions or otherwise seek advice that is particularly relevant to them. While they may find some of the advice useful, other advice may be perceived as less valuable. By studying the advice-seeking, advice-giving, and advice-evaluation behaviours in one of the largest online health communities in Europe, this paper looks at what determines which advice is perceived as helpful, and why. Drawing on network theory, we analysed the interaction data of 108,569 users over twelve consecutive years based on all publicly available information of an established Q&A online health community. Utilising zero-inflated negative binominal modelling, our results show that advice received from others, who have similar predominant interests, is valued more when reaching out for lay expertise. If this advice is given by peers, who can also draw on expertise from other health areas, allowing for a combination of diverse “lay” expertise, the advice is valued even more. Advice provided by those who are quick to obtain the latest knowledge available in the larger community further reinforces these effects. Our findings offer an original view to understand the influence of lay expertise exchanged via online health communities and hold implications for both policy-makers and medical practitioners regarding their approach to patient-initiated use of social media for health-related reasons.
•People readily seek health advice online.•People value advice from others who have similar predominant health interests.•People value advice from knowledgeable others.•People value speed of access to their peers' expertise.
Exchanging social support on online health communities (OHCs) can be beneficial to people's health, but the OHC characteristics that promote environments in which users feel socially supported are ...understudied. We develop a model that examines the mediating influence of OHC cohesiveness, altruism, and universality on the relationships between active and passive use and received OHC social support. Our findings indicate that social support can be derived from both active and passive use of the OHC. Although active use can directly stimulate received OHC social support, the relationship between passive use and social support is fully mediated by OHC group dynamics.
In online health communities (OHCs), patients can exchange social support through text-based communication. However, research on how various linguistic characteristics of patients' communication in ...these communities affect their social support outcomes remains limited. This study performs linguistic profiling on OHC participants based on a large dataset and empirically evaluates how lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic features affect users' communication and social support outcomes. The results show that lexical richness in health-related vocabulary negatively correlates with receiving informational support. The readability and brevity of written texts have positive relationships with incoming social support. Writing longer sentences positively correlates with receiving informational support but negatively correlates with receiving emotional support. Expressing negative sentiment leads to higher chances of receiving both types of social support. The use of terms related to perception and body parts increases the chances of receiving emotional support. The use of terms related to perception words additionally correlates to higher chances of receiving informational support. To receive social supports, being logical in expressions is also critical. Furthermore, the relationships between shared health language and social support are determined by the word category and social support type.
ABSTRACTObjective To fulfil a need for greater access to social support postoperatively, adults who have undergone bariatric surgery have turned to Online Health Communities (OHCs). Prior research ...has signposted the potential “functional” dimensions of social support found via OHCs. However, the “structural” dimensions experienced on OHC have yet to be explored. This study aimed to explore users’ experience of the “functional” and “structural” dimensions of social support facilitated within bariatric surgery OHCs.Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 adults who were waitlisted or had undergone bariatric surgery. Data were analysed with both deductive and inductive methodologies utilised. Deductive analysis was mapped to social support theories thus themes reflect “informational”, “emotional”, “belonging”, and “tangible” social support.Results There were five subthemes generated under the theme of “informational” social support, two under “emotional” and “tangible” social support, and one under “belonging” social support. Participants believed that the “informal” structural support in their life was insufficient and a contributing factor to turning to OHCs. For some participants, “formal” structural social support was facilitated via OHCs; however, most were seeking different types of support than what they can receive from their medical support team. The inductive analysis generated two themes including “access to reliable social support 24/7” and “satisfied with the support available on OHCs”, highlighting key advantages and value of OHCs.Conclusions There seems to be value for OHCs in bariatric surgery for social support. However, fundamentally the shared experiences and “belonging” social support seem to be a linchpin for the success of OHCs.
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