Online Medical Consultation: A review of literature and practice

Al-Mahdi, I., Gray, K. and Lederman, R.

Background: While the internet has long been a source of medical information, it has only recently been used for online private patient-doctor consultations. Online Medical Consultation (OMC) is now offered by many providers internationally with diverse models and features. Method: This study reports a review of the literature on OMCs and an empirical analysis of 28 existing OMC web sites to explore their major themes, modalities, costs, and geographical coverage. These features have been studied for a better understanding of the promise on which these services operate. Results: Regardless of the different labels given to OMC, academic works have reported several advantages and raised multiple concerns regarding particular OMC practices. OMC is a growing phenomenon featuring several interaction modalities, serving various medical consultation purposes, and accessible to consumers throughout the world. The contribution of this work is to present the current status and synthesize features of available OMC services.

Cite as: Al-Mahdi, I., Gray, K. and Lederman, R. (2015). Online Medical Consultation: A review of literature and practice. In Proc. 8th Australasian Workshop on Health Informatics and Knowledge Management (HIKM 2015) Sydney, Australia. CRPIT, 164. Maeder, A. and Warren, J. Eds., ACS. 97-100

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