JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Online healthcare service has become an effective supplementary way for traditional medical treatment. The development of online healthcare service depends on sustained interaction between healthcare professionals and patients. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the demands and gains of healthcare stakeholders in healthcare professional-patient online interaction, and figure out an agenda for future work.

Objective:

This study aims to present a systematic review of the causes and consequences of healthcare professional-patient online interaction. It seeks to reach a better understanding of why healthcare professionals and patients are willing to interact with each other online and what the consequences of healthcare professional-patient online interaction are for healthcare stakeholders. On this basis, we intend to identify the gaps in existing literatures and make recommendations for future research.

Methods:

In accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, a systematic retrieval was carried out from November 2017 to June 2018, including the retrieval of the electronic databases Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and an additional manual retrieval of reference lists. The extracted cause or consequence factors with similar meanings were merged through inductive analysis.

Results:

A total of 8,440 records were found after the initial search, 34 papers of which were selected for analysis. Channels of healthcare professional-patient online interaction used in targeted literatures include email, online health community, social media, and other situations such as Internet portal and desktop videoconferencing equipment. Accessibility to healthcare professionals, self-management and unmet needs are the main causes for patients to participate in online interaction. On the other hand, for the healthcare professionals, patient education, career needs and self-promotion are the major reasons why they take the online approach. There are several aspects of the consequences of healthcare professional-patient online interaction on healthcare stakeholders. Consequences on patients include patient empowerment, health promotion and acquisition of uncertain answers. Consequences on healthcare professionals include social and economic returns, out of self-control and getting more appointments. Healthcare professional-patient online interaction also improves the communication efficiency in offline settings and helps administrators of online healthcare service get a better understanding of the patients’ needs. In addition, healthcare stakeholders have usually encountered ethical and legal issues during online interaction.

Conclusions:

Through a systematic review, we seek out the causes and consequences of healthcare professional-patient online interaction, on the basis of which we can reach a better understanding of motivations of healthcare professionals and patients to participate in online interaction, and demonstrate the consequences of healthcare professional-patient interaction. Recommendations for future research are given from the aspects of potential topics, demographic characteristics, research methods and inconsistent findings among existing studies. This review is also expected to contribute to the sustained development of online healthcare services.