Digital and social media in healthcare

Online Personal Branding in the Sharing Economy: Implications for Physicians (DHA2019-03)

Author/s: Tingting Zhang, Xiangbin Yan and William Yu Chung Wang

Abstract: Personal branding is useful for physicians to promote themselves on healthcare sharing platform in the era of sharing economy. However, there is a lack of understanding of the antecedents and outcomes of personal branding. Using a mixed method, this study attempts to investigate the antecedents and consequences of strategic personal branding among healthcare professionals on healthcare sharing platform. Following the environment-strategy-performance paradigm, a research framework is proposed, which is modified based on the finding of a qualitative study using interview data. The modified research framework is further tested using data on a Chinese healthcare service sharing platform. The results of this study can advance the understanding of the antecedents, process, and outcomes of personal branding in a sharing economy context and have meaningful implications for people who want to offer services on sharing platform and for platform managers who seek to improve the features and design of healthcare service sharing platforms.

Harvesting Wisdom for Healthcare Research: Social Media for Social Good (DHA2019-09)

Author/s: Dr. Ji Yu, Nazim Taskin and David Pauleen

Abstract: The proliferation of social media offers a new channel for researchers in healthcare to recruit diverse participants, collect rich and connected data, and conduct sophisticated analysis. However, many challenges still need to be overcome in this area, such as difficulties with acquiring data and dealing with ethical issues. Motivated by the opportunities and challenges, as well as leveraging the concept of “wisdom of the crowds”, a new wisdom network is proposed in this paper to help researchers in healthcare effectively generate, collect, analyze and utilize wisdom-of-the-crowds-type data. The wisdom will derive from a selected crowd: older people with life experience, with their higher levels of crystallized intelligence. Advanced data analysis, e.g., machine learning for sentiment analysis, will be adopted. The network will provide researchers with a direct channel to communicate with motivated participants and the opportunity to pose questions and receive quick and reliable data. Besides the significant academic implications, the network could also have crucial applications for both business and government in the emerging technology-driven healthcare landscape.

An Aging Community and the Advanced HealthTech: Transforming Digital Gap into Digital Gain among the Elderly – A Study of Community Health Centres in China (DHA2019-10)

Author/s: Ruilin Zhu and Zhiqin Wu

Abstract: The elderly is generally excluded from the majority of the groups to make most use of rapid digital innovation in enhancing their own well-beings. This phenomenon is even more disturbing in healthcare sector, the Community Health Centre (CHCs) in particular, where the swiftly aging demographic structure in China aggravates the concern over the widening digital gap to prevent the elderly from being involved into the increasing benefits brought along with technology advancement. Higher in lower while less represented in literature, CHCs thus provides a thought-provoking examining window to investigate the ongoing situation of digital gap among the elderly and lays a research ground on which the transformation of this scene into digital gain must be discussed to meet the goals outlined in Healthcare Reform 2020 of China.

Can New Bundled Service Improve Doctors’ Performance in Online Health Communities? (DHA2019-22)

Author/s: Qiuju Yin, Cen He, Chenxi Guo and Zhijun Yan

Abstract: With the development of the Internet and information technology, online health communities (OHCs) have become an important platform for patients to seek online medical consultation services and social support. In order to attract more high-quality doctors and patients, OHCs start to launch bundling feature to provide better health services, such as bundled service named Personal Doctor Service. Existing bundling research mostly focuses on the field of lifestyle and entertainment products or services, while ignoring the bundling of professional health services provided by doctors. In this paper, using the panel dataset from one of the largest OHCs in China, we explore the impact of the new bundled service on the amount of doctors’ consultation. We employ difference-in-difference models to evaluate the effects of this new service. We find a significant increase in doctors’ online text consultations, online total consultations after the implementation of the bundled service. Finally, the paper puts forward relevant suggestions to provide decision support for doctors’ online behavior and the vigorous development of OHCs.

The application of Mobile payment in hospitals of China (DHA2019-16)

Author/s: Qingqing Liu, Wenjie Long, Yile Ning, Tingchun Wu, Pinliang Chen, Huili Liao, Shaoxiang Xian and Zhongqi Yang

Abstract: Mobile payment is one of the fastest growing trends of technology in China. At present, mobile payment has been popularized in various cities in China. Under the background of the “Internet + medical health” strategy proposed by the State Council of China, mobile payment is more and more widely used in hospitals. What’s more, mobile payments are expected to be available in all hospitals in China by 2020. The mobile payment in hospitals is mainly realized through WeChat pay, Alipay and the Apple pay, which offer speed, convenience, security for the patients and save a lot of labor costs for the hospital.

Types, Roles and Management of Online Health Communities a Literature Review (DHA2019-13)

Author/s: Zhijun Yan and Jiachen Wang

Abstract: Online health communities (OHCs) have rapidly developed as one of the most important channels which offer medical services such as disease consultations, medical experience sharing and health management between health-related stakeholders (patients, doctors, nurses, etc.). Quite a few studies try to investigate OHCs from various disciplines. Therefore, it is necessary to summarize the existing literature and to shed light on future directions. We first query and collect the latest literature of OHCs from web of science. Then we classify the extant studies from different perspectives, including types of OHCs, key roles OHCs play, main research questions in OHCs, the research methodology adopted in related OHCs works, etc. And their main results from which we can identify the most interesting topics and used research methods in the existing literature are summarized and presented. Furthermore, we also present some of our works related to OHCs. We describe our recent researches from two aspects, behavior research and data mining. Finally, based on summarization of existing works, we discuss several possible future directions of OHCs researches. We mainly explore them from research question and research method perspectives.