Understanding the Dimensions of Medical Crowdfunding: A Visual Analytics Approach

Abstract

<jats:sec> <jats:title>Background</jats:title> <jats:p>Medical crowdfunding has emerged as a growing field for fundraising opportunities. Some environmental trends have driven the emergence of campaigns to raise funds for medical care. These trends include lack of medical insurance, economic backlash following the 2008 financial collapse, and shortcomings of health care regulations.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Objective</jats:title> <jats:p>Research regarding crowdfunding campaign use, reasons, and effects on the provision of medical care and individual relationships in health systems is limited. This study aimed to explore the nature and dimensions of the phenomenon of medical crowdfunding using a visual analytics approach and data crawled from the GoFundMe crowdfunding platform in 2019. We aimed to explore and identify the factors that contribute to a successful campaign.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Methods</jats:title> <jats:p>This data-driven study used a visual analytics approach. It focused on descriptive analytics to obtain a panoramic insight into medical projects funded through the GoFundMe crowdfunding platform.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Results</jats:title> <jats:p>This study highlighted the relevance of positioning the campaign for fundraising. In terms of motivating donors, it appears that people are typically more generous in contributing to campaigns for children rather than those for adults. The results emphasized the differing dynamics that a picture posted in the campaign brings to the potential for medical crowdfunding. In terms of donor’s motivation, the results show that a picture depicting the pediatric patient by himself or herself is the most effective. In addition, a picture depicting the current medical condition of the patient as severe is more effective than one depicting relative normalcy in the condition. This study also drew attention to the optimum length of the title. Finally, an interesting trend in the trajectory of donations is that the average amount of a donation decreases with an increase in the number of donors. This indicates that the first donors tend to be the most generous.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Conclusions</jats:title> <jats:p>This study examines the relationship between social media, the characteristics of a campaign, and the potential for fundraising. Its analysis of medical crowdfunding campaigns across the states offers a window into the status of the country’s health care affordability. This study shows the nurturing role that social media can play in the domain of medical crowdfunding. In addition, it discusses the drivers of a successful fundraising campaign with respect to the GoFundMe platform.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Social Media Use for Health Purposes: Systematic Review

“…Since social media can reach varied stakeholders and a wide audience in society, nongovernmental health organizations can use social media to mobilize social resources. Studies found that these organizations leveraged social media to advocate for change in public policies related to health issues such as HIV/AIDS [62] and mental health [63], raise funds for individual medical care and health-related research [64,65], and raise awareness and promote actions to address health problems such as medical equipment shortages [66]. Although a formal test of the effectiveness of using social media for social mobilization is lacking, the successful cases described in the articles show that social media provides a platform for nongovernmental health organizations to effectively mobilize resources and advocate for collective actions to achieve their goals [62].…”

Explaining Donation Behavior in Medical Crowdfunding in Social Media

“…Xu and Wang (2019) and Ba et al (2021) extend the research to the context of China. Regarding the role of social media in MC, Beier and Wagner (2015), Lu et al (2015), and Ren et al (2020) show that social media helps to spread MC campaigns. Berliner and Kenworthy (2017) and Kubheka (2020) emphasize the requirement of digital skills in MC successful in social media.…”

New digital safety net or just more ‘friendfunding’? Institutional analysis of medical crowdfunding in the United States

“…There are three ways to access medical campaigns through the US version of the GoFundMe website: accessing a list of 1,000 campaigns selected algorithmically by the site, listed in the 'Medical' category of the 'Discover' page; searching for campaigns with a specific keyword (e.g., 'cancer'); or obtaining a direct link to a campaign through social media or similar means. Like other recent research on GoFundMe (Ren et al, 2020;Saleh et al, 2020), we used the first approach, since it is in practice the most viable means of obtaining a wide variety of campaigns across the US that are guaranteed to be in the medical category. The most viable alternative would be to use the search feature, but that would limit results to campaigns that match pre-defined keywords.…”