Are my symptoms serious Dr Google? A resource-based typology of value co-destruction in online self-diagnosis

Online self-diagnosis, where consumers engage with technology by applying their knowledge and skills to generate a medical diagnosis without the participation of a health care professional, is commonplace. Although co-creation of value for consumers and e-health service providers (i.e., suppliers of technological interfaces for consumers to self-diagnose) can occur via “do-it-yourself” diagnosis, we argue that it also has strong potential for value co-destruction. This is because of deficiencies in or misuse of resources (consumer or e-health provider). Based on a review of the service science, information systems and health care literatures, we develop a typology of value co-destruction in online self-diagnosis. It shows that online self-diagnosis can result in value co-destruction of consumers' service process and outcome when consumer resources are deficient or misused (e.g., knowledge) or when e-health provider resources are lacking (e.g., poor quality offerings). The value co-destruction perspective has not been examined previously in this context and is important because it can negatively affect consumers' well-being. A consumer and service focus is missing from research on online self-diagnosis, which our typology addresses. Implications of our typology for providing online health information and more specialised self-diagnosis services are discussed, drawing on a multi-pronged, multi-stakeholder approach, along with future research opportunities.

Chinese abstract网络自我诊断，即消费者通过自己掌握的知识和技能，在没有专业医务人员的参与情况下，利用技术手段来获取医疗诊断，这种做法相当普遍。尽管消费者与电子医疗服务提供商(即为消费者自我诊断提供技术界面的供应商)之间的参与协作可通过“自助式”诊断而实现，但我们认为这种方式极有可能造成价值共毁。这是由于资源不足或资源使用不当而造成的。通过对服务科学、信息系统和医疗保健等文献的检索，我们得出了网络自我诊断中价值共毁的类型模式。研究表明，如果消费者的资源不足或资源使用不当(如相关知识)或者电子医疗提供商的资源匮乏(如资源的质量不佳)，网络自我诊断可导致消费者服务流程和疗效的价值共毁。文献中尚未有对价值共毁的研究，因此很有必要对其进行探讨，因为它可给消费者的福祉带来负面影响。通过借鉴多利益方的多方参与方法，本文阐述了我们的类型模式在网络医疗信息提供和更专业化的自我诊断服务中的指导意义，此外，还指出了未来的研究方向。