Information Behavior in Online Healthcare

Dear Colleagues,

The advancement of online health platforms in the last decade has brought about many benefits to all stakeholders (e.g., physicians, patients, and practitioners) in the healthcare industry. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic period, online health platforms, as one of the main health information sources, could efficiently provide informative support and emotional support for the public under the conditions of quarantine and lockdown policies. More importantly, online health platforms can be leveraged for alleviating urban–rural health disparities, creating social value. As user-generated content platforms, online health platforms provide an ideal setting where physicians can provide health-relevant knowledge and information, as well as online consultations; meanwhile, patients can share their experience for peer-to-peer support. By doing so, online health platforms, to some extent, have converted the situation of health information scarcity to a situation of health information abundance. Patients can improve their health literacy and health outcomes by actively engaging in health information seeking and processing through online health platforms. However, because of information asymmetry and the unobservable quality of health services, the value of these information behaviors on online health platforms remains vague. Physicians may lack  understanding of the appropriate means of information sharing, and the unexpected outcomes will diminish their motivation to contribute to these information behaviors on online health platforms. There is another possibility, that faced with abundant health information, patients exposed to an overload of information may easily generate information anxiety, thus leading to information avoidance behaviors. With regard to these challenges, information behaviors of both physicians and patients deserve to draw more scholarly and managerial attention for comprehensively understanding information behaviors on online health platforms and achieving its optimal social value.

Dr. Xiaofei Zhang
Dr. Feng Guo
Dr. Fanbo Meng
Guest Editors

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• online health platforms
• health information
• patient behavior
• physician behavior
• value creation