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Exploring Online Physician–Patient Interactions Through Information Sharing with Agent-Based Modeling

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LISS 2022 (LISS 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Operations Research ((LNOR))

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Abstract

Online health communities enhance physician–patient interactions through various social connections. Health-related posts have a significant influence on patients who are suffering from various symptoms. However, misinformation from the posts may impact patients’ decision-making. This paper proposes an agent-based model to explore the physician–patient interactions through health information sharing in online health communities. First, we introduce two agent types, namely influential users and ordinary users for a general online health community. Network parameters like numbers of users, followers, and fans as well as posting probability are considered in our model. Physician and patient agents are used to measure users’ average posts and support degrees for specific topics. Physician–patient interaction with factors in posting actions, social support, and random behaviors are also simulated. Finally, we run the above model on NetLogo. Taking the haodf.com website, a famous Chinese online health community, as an example, we examined the changes of the physician–patient interaction in different model parameter settings. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the NetLogo-based model in understanding the relationships between physicians and patients, and improving their health decision-making abilities in simulation.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in UIBE with grant numbers 20QD22 and CXTD12-04, and National Natural Science Foundation of China with grant number 62102087.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Technology and Management, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, 100029, China

    Donghua Chen

Authors
  1. Donghua Chen
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Correspondence to Donghua Chen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China

    Xiaopu Shang

  2. Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Xiaowen Fu

  3. School of Software Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China

    Yixuan Ma

  4. School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China

    Daqing Gong

  5. School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China

    Juliang Zhang

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Chen, D. (2023). Exploring Online Physician–Patient Interactions Through Information Sharing with Agent-Based Modeling. In: Shang, X., Fu, X., Ma, Y., Gong, D., Zhang, J. (eds) LISS 2022. LISS 2022. Lecture Notes in Operations Research. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2625-1_5

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