Promotion strategy for online healthcare platform during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from Spring Rain Doctor in China

Knowledge mapping of online healthcare: An interdisciplinary visual analysis using VOSviewer and CiteSpace

Background

Online healthcare has been regarded as a permanent component and complementation in routine worldwide healthcare. Although there have been large-scale related studies in this field, studies are scattered across disciplines. Numerous publications are needed to systematically and comprehensively identify the status quo, development, and future hotspots in this field.

Methods

Publications on online healthcare were screened from the WoS database. By using VOSviewer and CiteSpace, this study analyzed 4636 articles in this field with 60,306 associated references. First, countries/regions distributions, institutions distributions, influential journals, and productive authors were obtained. Then, co-citation analysis, co-occurrence analysis, timeline analysis, and burst detection were further conducted to sketch the panorama of online healthcare.

Results

There were 147 countries/regions participated in and contributed to this field in total. Accounting for over half of the total number of publications, the USA, England, Australia, China, and Canada played significant roles in this area. Among the 24,362 authors, Guo XT was the most influential author. The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health was the journal with the most publications and citations. Studies in this field have shifted from basic research to applied practice research. COVID-19, mental health, healthcare, and healthcare workers were the most common keywords, indicating that studies on the impact of online healthcare on healthcare workers, online healthcare service for COVID-19, and mental health will be promising areas in the future.

Conclusions

Research on online healthcare is booming, while worldwide cooperation is still regionalized. Cross-regional cooperation among institutions and scholars is needed to enhance in the future. Online healthcare services for specific health fields and specific groups are the current and developing topics in this field.

How Does the Design of Consultation Pages Affect Patients' Perception of Physician Authority and Willingness to Seek Offline Treatment: A Randomized Controlled Trial

This study aimed to assess the impact of the color and font size of a dialogue box on an online physician-patient interaction page on patients' perceptions of the physician's authority and their willingness to schedule an offline appointment. A 2 × 2 between-group experiment was conducted to compare the effects of two dialogue box colors (gold vs. grey) and two font sizes (large vs. regular) on patients' perceptions. The results showed that a larger font size had a significant positive impact on patients' perceptions of the physician's authority, and the use of a gold-colored dialogue box also had a significant positive effect. A significant interaction was found between the dialogue box color and font size and patients' perceptions of the physician's authority. In addition, it was found that positive perceptions of the physician's authority significantly affected patients' willingness to schedule offline appointments and played a fully mediating role in the path of page design affecting offline appointment intentions. This study provides evidence that the design elements of a dialogue box-particularly, its color and font size-can influence patients' perceptions of a physician's authority and their willingness to schedule an offline appointment. These findings suggest that modifying the page design could improve the effectiveness of physician-patient communication.