Online Medical Consultation Service-Oriented Recommendations: Systematic Review

Online health communities (OHCs) have given rise to a new e-service known as online medical consultation (OMC), enabling remote interactions between physicians and patients. To address challenges such as patient information overload and uneven distribution of physician visits, OHCs should develop OMC-oriented recommenders. We aimed to comprehensively investigate what paradigms lead to the success of OMC-oriented recommendations. A literature search conducted through e-databases, including PubMed, ACM Digital Library, Springer, and ScienceDirect from January 2011 to December 2023. This review included all papers directly and indirectly related to the topic of healthcare-related recommendations for online services. The search identified 313 articles, of which 26 met the inclusion criteria. Despite the growing academic interest in OMC recommendations, there remains a lack of consensus of e-service-oriented recommenders on their definition among researchers. The discussion highlights three key factors influencing recommender success: features, algorithms, and metrics. It advocates for moving beyond traditional e-commerce-oriented recommenders to establish an innovative theoretical framework for e-service-oriented recommenders and addresses critical technical issues in two-sided personalized recommendations. The review underscores the essence of e-services, particularly in knowledge-intensive and labor-intensive domains like OMC, where patients seek interpretable recommendations due to their lack of domain knowledge, and physicians must balance their energy levels to avoid overworking. Our study's findings shed light on the importance of customizing e-service-oriented personalized recommendations to meet the distinct expectations of two-sided users, considering their cognitive abilities, decision-making perspectives, and preferences. To achieve this, a paradigm shift is essential to develop unique attributes and explore distinct content tailored for both parties involved.