Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: May 20, 2025
Date Accepted: Sep 30, 2025
Health service early-stage digital adaptation of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) internet hospitals: a qualitative exploratory study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hospitals in China are experimenting to develop internet hospitals to provide health services. To date, little is known about the characteristics of health services delivered by TCM internet hospitals.
Objective:
This study aimed to investigate the health service innovation of TCM internet hospitals from the aspects of target patients, value offering, and service provision.
Methods:
Qualitative research combined qualitative interview and documentary research in this study. Interviews were completed with clinicians from sample TCM internet hospitals to investigate the target patients and value offerings. Documentary research was conducted to investigate the service provision. Thematic analysis was employed to interpret all the materials collected.
Results:
Totally 7 TCM internet hospitals and 14 participants were included. The target patients of TCM internet hospitals were patients with subsequent visits and patients who sought consultations on health management. TCM internet hospitals were improving patients’ adherence to subsequent medical care and TCM promotion. These hospitals provided functional service (including telemedicine, telepharmacy, telenursing, online health consultations, and convenient service), and TCM specialty service (including “Tianzhi” [crude herb moxibustion], “Zhiweibing” [preventive treatment of disease], and post-stroke rehabilitation).
Conclusions:
TCM internet hospitals are in an early stage of digital adaptation, offering primarily basic online-offline services. While not yet fully innovative, they represent a transitional model with potential to reshape TCM delivery. Our findings contribute high-level insights into this emerging integration and inform future development toward more structured, patient-centered digital TCM services.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.