JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Breast cancer is the number one cause of mortality among females. Female patients feel reluctant and embarrassed about meeting physicians in person to discuss their intimate parts; as a result, they prefer to use social media for such interactions. The number of patients and physicians interacting and seeking information related to breast cancer on social media is growing. However, a physician may behave inappropriately on social media by sharing a patient’s personal medical data excessively to colleagues or the public. Such an act would reduce the physician’s trustworthiness from the patient’s perspective. Thus, in this study, an exploration of a more suitable trust model is presented. Investigating the multi-faceted trust model that is currently used for social media interaction facilitates enhanced adoption of its usage for breast self-examination (BSE). Multi-faceted trust model characteristics go beyond being personalized, context-dependent, and transitive. This model is more user-centric, which allows any user to evaluate the interaction process. In this study, a BSE using a multi-faceted trust model is proposed and evaluated.

Objective:

1) to identify the trustworthiness indicators that are suitable for the BSE system; 2) to design and propose a BSE system, and 3) to evaluate the multi-faceted trustworthiness interaction between patients and physicians.

Methods:

We used a qualitative study using an open-ended interview with 32 participants (16 outpatients and 16 physicians). The interview started with an introduction to the research objective and an explanation of the steps on how to use the BSE system. The BSE system was evaluated by asking the patient to rate their trustworthiness with the physician after consultation. The evaluation has monitored the activity in the chat room (interaction between physician and patient) based on the daily meeting, weekly meeting, and the posting article by the physician in the forum.

Results:

Based on the interview session with 16 physicians and 16 patients on using the BSE system reveals honesty as having a strong positive correlation (0.91) followed by credibility (0.85), confidence (0.79), and faith (0.79). Others are belief (0.75), competency (0.73), and reliability (0.73), and the lowest preference is reputation (0.72). On the other hand, the trust level of a patient to a particular physician will increase after several interactions.

Conclusions:

Multi-faceted trustworthiness brings a significant impact on the BSE system. The trustworthiness indicators provide a trustworthy system and ethical interaction between patient and physician. A new patient can get a consultation by referring to the best physician preference. Patients also trust a physician based on another patient’s recommendation regarding the physician’s trust level. The correlation analysis also shows that the most preferred trustworthiness indicator is honesty.