Multidimensional Feature Classification of the Health Information Needs of Patients With Hypertension in an Online Health Community Through Analysis of 1000 Patient Question Records: Observational Study

Background: With the rapid development of online health communities, increasing numbers of patients and families are seeking health information on the internet.

Objective: This study aimed to discuss how to fully reveal the health information needs expressed by patients with hypertension in their questions in a web-based environment and how to use the internet to help patients with hypertension receive personalized health education.

Methods: This study randomly selected 1000 text records from the question data of patients with hypertension from 2008 to 2018 collected from Good Doctor Online and constructed a classification system through literature research and content analysis. This paper identified the background characteristics and questioning intention of each patient with hypertension based on the patient's question and used co-occurrence network analysis and the k-means clustering method to explore the features of the health information needs of patients with hypertension.

Results: The classification system for the health information needs of patients with hypertension included the following nine dimensions: drugs (355 names), symptoms and signs (395 names), tests and examinations (545 names), demographic data (526 kinds), diseases (80 names), risk factors (37 names), emotions (43 kinds), lifestyles (6 kinds), and questions (49 kinds). There were several characteristics of the explored web-based health information needs of patients with hypertension. First, more than 49% of patients described features, such as drugs, symptoms and signs, tests and examinations, demographic data, and diseases. Second, patients with hypertension were most concerned about treatment (778/1000, 77.80%), followed by diagnosis (323/1000, 32.30%). Third, 65.80% (658/1000) of patients asked physicians several questions at the same time. Moreover, 28.30% (283/1000) of patients were very concerned about how to adjust the medication, and they asked other treatment-related questions at the same time, including drug side effects, whether to take the drugs, how to treat the disease, etc. Furthermore, 17.60% (176/1000) of patients consulted physicians about the causes of clinical findings, including the relationship between the clinical findings and a disease, the treatment of a disease, and medications and examinations. Fourth, by k-means clustering, the questioning intentions of patients with hypertension were classified into the following seven categories: "how to adjust medication," "what to do," "how to treat," "phenomenon explanation," "test and examination," "disease diagnosis," and "disease prognosis."

Conclusions: In a web-based environment, the health information needs expressed by Chinese patients with hypertension to physicians are common and distinct, that is, patients with different background features ask relatively common questions to physicians. The classification system constructed in this study can provide guidance to health information service providers for the construction of web-based health resources, as well as guidance for patient education, which could help solve the problem of information asymmetry in communication between physicians and patients.