Are Expert Patients Popular in Online Patient Portals?

Patients seek support and advice from other patients regarding diagnosis, medication, impact of medication, treatment, etc. The information on these sites may affect patients' decisions on medical issues such as what medication and treatment to use etc. This study addresses the following research questions to identify the organic antecedents of quality of response from peers in the online health community in Parkinson's disease forum: What are the antecedents of a quality user? Do conventional influence measures such as followers, likes etc. predict the clinical accuracy of such users in the context online patient-to-patient portals? Patient safety is often affected by erroneous and/or misleading medical information exchanged on social networks. The critical factors identified could be used by healthcare social networks as the basis for improving the quality of information exchanged among users. The study utilizes the clinical evaluations of neurosurgeons to establish the quality of responses provided by the users.