Empowerment and Knowledge Sharing in Health Infomediary: Empirical Evidence from Reconstructive Surgery Patients

Health infomediaries have become an important avenue for patients to seek health-related information. Despite the importance of health infomediaries, only a few can sustain in the long run and the rest are still struggling to gain more engagement from patients. This study provides an approach for health infomediaries to gain more engagement and boost knowledge contribution through patient empowerment and provides important evidence that may refute the belief that self-efficacy alone can lead to higher knowledge contribution on health infomediaries, at least for reconstructive surgery patients. The study investigates the archival data from reconstructive surgery patients to gain insight on knowledge sharing behavior on health infomediaries. The results suggest that self-efficacy can influence knowledge sharing on health infomediaries through the mediation of patient empowerment, and that self-efficacy alone does not lead to knowledge sharing on health infomediaries

DEVELOPMENT OF A DOCTOR RATING CRITERIA FOR A MEDICAL TOURISM PORTAL

Lack of information prior to medical tourism visits is a significant issue in meeting the expectations of patients. A global portal with doctor rating systems plausibly can bridge this gap. Doctor rating com-parisons can help to reduce the information asymmetry in medical tourism. This study proposes a set of standards for doctor rating criteria for a medical tourism portal. A model has been developed to investigate the interaction effect of doctor rating systems with trust in an intermediary and information quality on willingness to travel abroad for treatment. Hypotheses were then empirically evaluated us-ing an experiment. Implications and contributions of the study are discussed