Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Major/Program

Business Administration

First Advisor's Name

Weidong Xia

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

Joyce J. Elam

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Third Advisor's Name

Karlene C. Cousins

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Fourth Advisor's Name

William Newburry

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Fifth Advisor's Name

Roman Lukyanenko

Fifth Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Keywords

affordances, social media, healthcare, technology, clinical process, patient-physician interaction

Date of Defense

8-3-2016

Abstract

As an effort to guide patients toward being more informed and more involved as healthcare decision makers in the clinical processes, health care organizations have adopted a new technology referred to as an integrative social media platform (ISMP). This ISMP combines features of mobile technology and those of social media technology, integrating healthcare systems in order to support a more patient-centered healthcare process. However, users, both physicians and patients, have showed varied usages of ISMP, as a results, have shown mixed results of ISMP. To provide a better understanding of the use of ISMP, especially the interaction between patients and physicians, I turned to the concept of affordances. Affordances describe the possibilities for goal-oriented actions that a technical object offers to a user. Using a mixed-method approach with real archival event log data, conversation texts, documents, interview, and focus-group data from a large hospital which had adopted an ISMP, I confirmed three types of affordance: perceived affordance, behavioral affordance, and interactive affordance. I identified two key affordances of ISMP that lead to patient-centered care, namely ubiquitous access and virtual healthcare consultation, which represent a behavioral affordance and an interactive affordance, respectively. I also explored how different types of affordances are actualized and how they interact with each other to contribute to patient-centered care.

Identifier

FIDC001177

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