Unveiling patient-centric interactions in virtual consultation: A comprehensive text mining approach

This study aims to explore patient perceptions and interactions with virtual consultation (VC) systems to understand the factors influencing their adoption and satisfaction. We analyzed 21,839 patient reviews from four major virtual consultation platforms-MDLive, Doctor on Demand, Maple, and HealthTap-collected from publicly accessible sources. Sentiment analysis, word frequency analysis, topic modeling using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), and association rule mining were used to extract insights. The findings reveal a generally positive sentiment among patients, with recurring themes focusing on app functionality and the important role of doctors in the virtual consultation experience. Virtual consultation systems were found to play a dual role: as a communicator during initial interactions and as a medium facilitating patient-doctor communication. The analysis also identified key doctor-related factors, categorized by the Theory of Planned Behavior, including attitudes (e.g., empathy), subjective norms (e.g., cultural competence), and perceived behavioral control (e.g., time management). The study provides valuable insights for enhancing healthcare system design and improving virtual consultation quality. However, limitations include potential bias in patient reviews, limited platform focus, and the lack of demographic data. Future research should explore advanced machine learning techniques and investigate relationships between different factors to improve virtual healthcare.