Location
Level 0, Open Space, Owen G. Glenn Building
Start Date
12-15-2014
Description
With the rapid growth of social networks and the increased rate of adoption by patients, healthcare organizations are progressively adopting online community-based initiatives to conduct healthcare activities. Considering the enormous potential online communities hold, for practitioners to get closer to their patients, online communities could be effectively utilized to conduct health management programs. Based upon the literature on attachment and social presence theory, we propose a research framework to examine the effectiveness of an online community-based health management intervention. Specifically, we study how different online community characteristics would influence how members become attached to the community and their adherence to health advice disseminated through the community. A field experiment will be carried out in collaboration with a leading hospital in a South-east Asian country to test the hypotheses. This study provides several theoretical and practical implications in the areas of online health communities, healthcare interventions and attachment literature.
Recommended Citation
Goonawardene, Nadee and Tan, Sharon, "Practitioner-driven Virtual Communities: An Attachment Theory Perspective to Patients’ Adherence to Online Health Advice" (2014). ICIS 2014 Proceedings. 31.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2014/proceedings/ISHealthcare/31
Practitioner-driven Virtual Communities: An Attachment Theory Perspective to Patients’ Adherence to Online Health Advice
Level 0, Open Space, Owen G. Glenn Building
With the rapid growth of social networks and the increased rate of adoption by patients, healthcare organizations are progressively adopting online community-based initiatives to conduct healthcare activities. Considering the enormous potential online communities hold, for practitioners to get closer to their patients, online communities could be effectively utilized to conduct health management programs. Based upon the literature on attachment and social presence theory, we propose a research framework to examine the effectiveness of an online community-based health management intervention. Specifically, we study how different online community characteristics would influence how members become attached to the community and their adherence to health advice disseminated through the community. A field experiment will be carried out in collaboration with a leading hospital in a South-east Asian country to test the hypotheses. This study provides several theoretical and practical implications in the areas of online health communities, healthcare interventions and attachment literature.