Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Sep 25;21(9):e13940.
doi: 10.2196/13940.

The Antecedents and Consequences of Health Care Professional-Patient Online Interactions: Systematic Review

Lili Shang  1 , Meiyun Zuo  1 , Dan Ma  1 , Qinjun Yu  2
Affiliations

The Antecedents and Consequences of Health Care Professional-Patient Online Interactions: Systematic Review

Lili Shang et al. J Med Internet Res. .

Abstract

Background: Online health care services effectively supplement traditional medical treatment. The development of online health care services depends on sustained interactions between health care professionals (HCPs) and patients. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the demands and gains of health care stakeholders in HCP-patient online interactions and determine an agenda for future work.

Objective: This study aims to present a systematic review of the antecedents and consequences of HCP-patient online interactions. It seeks to reach a better understanding of why HCPs and patients are willing to interact with each other online and what the consequences of HCP-patient online interactions are for health care stakeholders. Based on this, we intend to identify the gaps in existing studies and make recommendations for future research.

Methods: In accordance with the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines, a systematic retrieval was carried out from the Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus electronic databases. The search results were confined to those papers published in English between January 1, 2000 and June 30, 2018. Selected studies were then evaluated for quality; studies that did not meet quality criteria were excluded from further analysis. Findings of the reviewed studies related to our research questions were extracted and synthesized through inductive thematic analysis.

Results: A total of 8440 records were found after the initial search, 28 papers of which were selected for analysis. Accessibility to HCPs, self-management, and unmet needs were the main triggers for patients to participate in online interaction. For HCPs, patient education, career needs, and self-promotion were the major reasons why they took the online approach. There were several aspects of the consequences of HCP-patient online interactions on health care stakeholders. Consequences for patients included patient empowerment, health promotion, and acquisition of uncertain answers. Consequences for HCPs included social and economic returns, lack of control over their role, and gaining more appointments. HCP-patient online interactions also improved communication efficiency in offline settings and helped managers of online health care settings get a better understanding of patients' needs. Health care stakeholders have also encountered ethical and legal issues during online interaction.

Conclusions: Through a systematic review, we sought out the antecedents and consequences of HCP-patient online interactions to understand the triggers for HCPs and patients to participate and the consequences of participating. Potential future research topics are the influences on the chain of online interaction, specifications and principles of privacy design within online health care settings, and roles that sociodemographic and psychological characteristics play. Longitudinal studies and the adoption of text-mining method are worth encouraging. This paper is expected to contribute to the sustained progress of online health care settings.

Keywords: eHealth; health care professional–patient interaction; online communication; online health care service; review.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

Figures

None
Flow diagram for the selection of literature.
None
A visualization of antecedents and consequences of health care professional–patient online interaction.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Ball MJ, Lillis J. E-health: transforming the physician/patient relationship. Int J Med Inform. 2001 Apr;61(1):1–10. - PubMed
    1. Farnan JM, Snyder Sulmasy L, Worster BK, Chaudhry HJ, Rhyne JA, Arora VM. Online medical professionalism: patient and public relationships: policy statement from the American College of Physicians and the Federation of State Medical Boards. Ann Intern Med. 2013 Apr 16;158(8):620–627. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-158-8-201304160-00100. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Guo S, Guo X, Fang Y, Vogel D. How doctors gain social and economic returns in online health-care communities: a professional capital perspective. J Manage Inform Syst. 2017 Aug 17;34(2):487–519. doi: 10.1080/07421222.2017.1334480. - DOI
    1. Guo X, Guo S, Vogel D, Li Y. Online healthcare community interaction dynamics. J Manage Sci Eng. 2016;1(1):58–74. doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1383.101004. - DOI
    1. de Jong CC, Ros WJ, Schrijvers G. The effects on health behavior and health outcomes of internet-based asynchronous communication between health providers and patients with a chronic condition: a systematic review. J Med Internet Res. 2014 Jan 16;16(1):e19. doi: 10.2196/jmir.3000. https://www.jmir.org/2014/1/e19/ - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types