Transforming and facilitating health care delivery through social networking platforms: evidences and implications from WeChat

Objectives Telehealth or remote care has been widely leveraged to provide health care support and has achieved tremendous developments and positive results, including in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Social networking platform, as an easy-to-use tool, has provided users with simplified means to collect data outside of the traditional clinical environment. WeChat, one of the most popular social networking platforms in many countries, has been leveraged to conduct telehealth and hosted a vast amount of patient-generated health data (PGHD), including text, voices, images, and videos. Its characteristics of convenience, promptness, and cross-platform support enrich and simplify health care delivery and communication, addressing some weaknesses of traditional clinical care during the pandemic. This study aims to systematically summarize how WeChat platform has been leveraged to facilitate health care delivery and how it improves the access to health care.Materials and Methods Utilizing Levesque's health care accessibility model, the study explores WeChat's impact across 5 domains: Approachability, Acceptability, Availability and accommodation, Affordability, and Appropriateness.Results The findings highlight WeChat's diverse functionalities, ranging from telehealth consultations and remote patient monitoring to seamless PGHD exchange. WeChat's integration with health tracking apps, support for telehealth consultations, and survey capabilities contribute significantly to disease management during the pandemic.Discussion and Conclusion The practices and implications from WeChat may provide experiences to utilize social networking platforms to facilitate health care delivery. The utilization of WeChat PGHD opens avenues for shared decision-making, prompting the need for further research to establish reporting guidelines and policies addressing privacy and ethical concerns associated with social networking platforms in health research. Telehealth or remote care helps people get health care. Telehealth is especially helpful in places where health care is hard to get. Social media or networking tools can get data from patients outside of where they receive health care (like a doctor's office or hospital). WeChat is an online tool used by many people. It is a tool that helps people get telehealth services. It also lets people share data in lots of ways, like text, voices, images, and videos. WeChat is easy, fast, and works with lots of other devices, like phones, computers, and tablets. This study talks about how WeChat helped people get health care. The study describes 5 aspects of WeChat: Approachability, Acceptability, Availability and accommodation, Affordability, and Appropriateness. The lessons we learned from studying WeChat can be used by other social networking tools around the world to help people get health care. Future studies could look at what types of rules can make sure health research is ethical and protects people's privacy.