Utilizing online reviews for analyzing digital healthcare consultation services: Examining perspectives of both healthcare customers and healthcare professionals.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Digital healthcare consultation services, also known as telemedicine, have seen a surge in their usage, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study is to investigate the satisfaction determinants of healthcare customers (patients) and healthcare professionals (doctors), providing digital healthcare consultation services. METHODS: The analysis involved scraping online reviews of 11 telemedicine apps meant for patients and 7 telemedicine apps meant for doctors, yielding a total of 44,440 patient reviews and 4748 doctor reviews. A structural topic modeling analysis followed by regression, dominance, correspondence, and emotion analysis was conducted to derive insights. RESULTS: The study identified ten determinants of satisfaction from patients' and eight from doctors' perspectives. For patients, 'service variety and quality' (ß = 0.5527) was the top positive determinant, while 'payment disputes' (ß = -0.1173) and 'in-app membership' (ß = -0.031) negatively impacted satisfaction. For doctors, 'patient consultation management' (ß = 0.2009) was the leading positive determinant, with 'profile management' (ß = -0.1843), 'subscription' (ß = -0.183), and 'customer care support' (ß = -0.0908) being the negative ones. The most influential negative emotion for patients, anger, was closely associated with 'customer care service' and 'in-app memberships,' while joy was tied to 'service variety and quality' and 'offers and discounts.' For doctors, anger was associated with 'cost-effectiveness,' and joy with 'app responsiveness.' CONCLUSION: This study offers new insights by examining patient and doctor determinants at a granular level which can be used by telemedicine app developers and managers to build customer-centric services.