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Background In online medical consulting platforms, physicians can get both economic and social returns by offering online medical services, such as answering questions or sharing health care knowledge with patients. Physicians’ online prosocial behavior could bring many benefits to the health care industry. Monetary incentives could encourage physicians to engage more in online medical communities. However, little research has studied the impact of monetary incentives on physician prosocial behavior and the heterogeneity of this effect. Objective This study aims to explore the effects of monetary incentives on physician prosocial behavior and investigate the moderation effects of self-recognition and recognition from others of physician competence. Methods This study was a fixed-effect specification-regression model based on a difference-in-differences design with robust standard errors clustered at the physician level using monthly panel data. It included 26,543 physicians in 3851 hospitals over 133 months (November 2006-December 2017) from a leading online health care platform in China. We used the pricing strategy of physicians and satisfaction levels to measure their own and patients’ degree of recognition, respectively. Physicians’ prosocial behavior was measured by free services offered. Results The introduction of monetary incentives had a positive effect on physician prosocial behavior (β=1.057, P<.01). Higher self-recognition and others’ recognition level of physician competence increased this promotion effect (γ=0.275, P<.01 and γ=0.325, P<.01). Conclusions This study explored the positive effect of the introduction of monetary incentives on physician prosocial behavior. We found this effect was enhanced for physicians with a high level of self-recognition and others’ recognition of their competence. We provide evidence of the effect of monetary incentives on physicians’ prosocial behaviors in the telemedicine markets and insight for relevant stakeholders into how to design an effective incentive mechanism to improve physicians’ prosocial engagements.

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Nanomaterial-based biosensors have become one of the major topics in the field of diagnostics. With the growing demand on devices with improved sensitivity and selectivity, rapid response time, and low cost, four categories of nanomaterials have become popular in biosensor research: gold nanoparticles, graphene, carbon nanotubes, and photonic crystals. The ongoing research has brought new designs of biosensors based on nanomaterials, which have greatly improved the potential of field-deployable microfabricated devices. This review describes the recent technologies employing the aforementioned nanomaterials for electrochemical detection of biomolecules, including glucose, DNA, protein, toxins, and so on. We envisage that miniaturized lab-on-a-chip devices employing these nanomaterials will soon be an essential part of our daily life.

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Neurodegenerative disorders are a highly prevalent class of diseases, whose pathological mechanisms start before the appearance of any clear symptoms. This fact has prompted scientists to search for biomarkers that could aid early treatment. These currently incurable pathologies share the presence of aberrant aggregates called amyloids in the nervous system, which are composed of specific proteins. In this review, we discuss how these proteins, their conformations and modifications could be exploited as biomarkers for diagnostic purposes. We focus on proteins that are associated with the most prevalent neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and frontotemporal dementia. We also describe current challenges in detection, the most recent techniques with diagnostic potentials and possible future developments in diagnosis.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by the formation of neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) including amyloid-β (Aβ) in the brain. Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) plays a key role in the homeostasis of cholesterol and other lipids in blood circulation. The interaction between ApoE and Aβ has been implicated in the pathological progression of AD. In this study, the interaction of three isoforms of ApoE4, ApoE3 and ApoE2 with Aβ 1-40 and Aβ 1-42 peptides was investigated using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Interactions between Aβ peptides and ApoE isoforms were determined by monitoring the changes in ΔR ct of Nyquist plots. The affinity between Aβ 1-40 and Aβ 1-42 and ApoE isoforms interpreted from EIS data followed the trend: ApoE4 > ApoE3 > ApoE2. Using surface plasmon resonance (SPR), the binding affinity (K D ) constants for the interaction of ApoE4 with Aβ 1-40 and Aβ 1-42 peptides were determined as 185 � 21 nM and 156 � 18 nM, respectively, in agreement with our electrochemical results. Our proof-of-principle study demonstrates that EIS provides a promising platform for the investigation of protein-protein interactions implicated in AD.

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