JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Patient participation in the healthcare domain has surged dramatically through the availability of digital health platforms and online health communities (OHCs). Such patient-driven service innovation has both challenges and potentials for healthcare organizations. On one hand, they are worry about broadcasting misinformation and its negative influence on patients’ health decisions. On the other hand, patient participation offers the potential to enhance service value. Over the last five years, articles have surfaced that focus on value co-creation in the healthcare services and the importance of engaging patients and other actors in service delivery. However, a theoretical understanding of how to use OHCs for this purpose is still underdeveloped within the healthcare service ecosystem.

Objective:

This paper aims to introduce a theoretical discussion for better understanding the potential of OHCs for healthcare organisations, in particular for patients’ empowerment.

Methods:

The literature review study conducted a comprehensive search using 12 electronic databases (EMBASE, PsychINFO, Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Medline, PubMed, EBSCO (academic), CINAHL, AISeL, ACM, and Google Scholar) from 2013 to 2019. A total of 1388 studies were identified from the database search. After removing duplicates and applying inclusion criteria, we thematically analysed 56 articles. We then follow the six-step thematic analysis process defined by Braun and Clarke [1]. Coding consensus was achieved after conducting the percent agreement method with two scholars.

Results:

Following the thematic analysis steps, we identified a list of 5 salient themes including “communication extension”, “improved health literacy for patients and healthcare organisations”, “communication transparency with patients”, “informational and social support for patients”, and “patient empowerment in self-management”. The most frequent theme was the communication extension which covers 42% of the literature. This theme reported that an extension of communication between patients, caregivers, and physicians with organizations leading to new opportunities to create value with minimal time and cost restrictions. Improved health literacy and communication transparency with patients were the second and third most frequent themes, respectively with 26% (n=15) and 25% (n=14) of the literature. The frequency of these themes indicated that the use of OHCs to generate new knowledge from patients’ interactions, help healthcare organisations to customise treatment plans and establish transparent and effective communication between healthcare organizations and patients. Furthermore, thirteen (23%) and ten (17%) of the 56 studies contend the opportunity of using OHCs in terms of informational and emotional support and empowering patients in their self-management of diseases.

Conclusions:

This review enables better understanding of the current state-of-the-art into the online value co-creation and its potential for healthcare organisations. This study found that the opportunities for healthcare organizations through enhancing the engagement of patients and their co-creation of value have been rapidly increasing focusing on various digital health platforms. Our findings revealed an overall increase in research on value co-creation and the identified gaps and opportunities would release avenues for future directions in developing modernised and more effective value-oriented healthcare informatics research.