Online medical communities are transforming healthcare, and a new study inDecision Sciences, a leading research journal, explores how physicians' choices of communication medium impacts patient experience.
The research, conducted byThe College of w88 sports betting app, associate professor of Business Analytics and Operations at the w88 casino games, Reno, along with researchers from Dalian University of Technology, the University of Michigan–Flint and Lingnan University, used AI-driven data mining methods to analyze over 131,000 online consultation records and more than 7.6 million messages exchanged between physicians and patients. Their findings reveal that the medium of communication itself, not just the message, can significantly impact patient satisfaction.
The study found that while voice messages can enhance emotional warmth in communication, their use by physicians tends to negatively impact patient experience, particularly for patients with low-risk diseases. The researchers discovered that in such cases, voice messages weaken both professional support and emotional support, leading to lower patient satisfaction.
However, in high-risk disease conditions, such as lung cancer and leukemia, voice messages play a different role. Here, they enhance emotional and professional support, improving patient experience by fostering trust and providing reassurance in critical health situations.
“How physicians communicate is just as important as what they communicate,” Perera said. “The findings of our study could have significant implications for online medical service providers. Platform designers and healthcare professionals may have to reconsider how and when voice messages are used, potentially tailoring communication strategies based on disease severity.”
The study’s use of artificial intelligence in text analysis marks a major advancement in understanding doctor-patient interactions in digital healthcare. By employing natural language processing and sentiment analysis, AI was able to extract social support patterns from unstructured physician-patient conversations, quantify the emotional and professional support levels in different communication formats and measure patient reactions to various media choices using AI-driven sentiment scoring.
While this research underscores AI's transformative role in studying patient interactions and telemedicine strategies, as AI advances, it is set to redefine digital doctor-patient relationships, optimizing communication in telemedicine platforms, AI chatbots and virtual assistants.
“With the rapid expansion of telemedicine and AI-powered healthcare, we are keen to explore video-based consultations, integration of chatbots, and how personalized AI could optimize patient-doctor interactions,” Perera further elaborated on their plans for future research.
