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BackgroundHealth care service is a high-credence service and patients may face difficulties ascertaining service quality in order to make choices about their available treatment options. Online health communities (OHCs) provide a convenient channel for patients to search for physicians’ information, such as Word-of-Mouth (WOM), particularly on physicians’ service quality evaluated by other patients. Existing studies from other service domains have proved that WOM impacts consumer choice. However, how patients make a choice based on physicians’ WOM has not been studied, particularly with reference to different patient characteristics and by using real data.MethodsOne thousand eight hundred fifty three physicians’ real data were collected from a Chinese online health community. The data were analyzed using ordinary least squares (OLS) method.ResultsThe study found that functional quality negatively moderated the relationship between technical quality and patient choice, and disease risk moderated the relationship between physicians’ service quality and patient choice.ConclusionsOur study recommends that hospital managers need to consider the roles of both technical quality and functional quality seriously. Physicians should improve their medical skills and bedside manners based on the severity and type of disease to provide better service.

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Background The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic poses an enormous challenge to the global health system, and governments have taken active preventive and control measures. The health informatics community in China has actively taken action to leverage health information technologies for epidemic monitoring, detection, early warning, prevention and control, and other tasks. Objective The aim of this study was to develop a technical framework to respond to the COVID-19 epidemic from a health informatics perspective. Methods In this study, we collected health information technology–related information to understand the actions taken by the health informatics community in China during the COVID-19 outbreak and developed a health information technology framework for epidemic response based on health information technology–related measures and methods. Results Based on the framework, we review specific health information technology practices for managing the outbreak in China, describe the highlights of their application in detail, and discuss critical issues to consider when using health information technology. Technologies employed include mobile and web-based services such as Internet hospitals and Wechat, big data analyses (including digital contact tracing through QR codes or epidemic prediction), cloud computing, Internet of things, Artificial Intelligence (including the use of drones, robots, and intelligent diagnoses), 5G telemedicine, and clinical information systems to facilitate clinical management for COVID-19. Conclusions Practical experience in China shows that health information technologies play a pivotal role in responding to the COVID-19 epidemic.