An approach for collaboration between different stakeholders to strengthen the public health system

Abstract

Nowadays, the healthcare problem is one of the major crises in many parts of the world, especially the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this to a greater extent. Many developing countries with inadequate healthcare systems are suffering greatly from this crisis to provide proper medical services. The reasons are the insufficient number of healthcare providers, costs of medical tests and equipment, lack of accessible points of care and data analysis, and lack of sufficient online healthcare facilities. However, research on the benefits of establishing e-health platforms to strengthen the conventional public-health system is limited—most of the research targets patients in specific disease groups. This paper focuses on an approach for designing a healthcare social media platform for services provisioning, consuming, enabling patients to find an alternate source of healthcare advice, and then building a collaborative health community for all kinds of people. Its usability and applicability have been experimented with as a prototype on Android-based smartphone devices.  The results show six features and benefits that are distinct from existing approaches in the literature. In addition, the approach will be considered an affordable alternative to conventional healthcare in case of emergency treatment.