Dr Jian Ni
MM held a Public Lecture on the topic "A Dynamic Game of Doctors’ participation in Online Platform" presented by Dr Jian Ni, Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School on 27 July 2017 in AG710, Chung Sze Yuen Building.
Abstract:
Online healthcare communities allow physicians to share knowledge with peers (participate) and answer questions from patients (communicate) and patients to make appointment with doctors. How to motivate doctors to contribute expertise to help consumers achieve more judicious decisions is of fundamental importance for online healthcare platforms. We develop a dynamic equilibrium model in which doctors make participation and communication decisions to compete for demand from patients. The model recognizes learning from peers and the dynamic trade-off of the two decision variables: while publishing signals quality, it also intensifies competition among doctors in the long-run because of learning; communication helps increase demand at the risk of receiving lower ratings for service quality. Applying the model to a unique dataset with history of doctor participation and communication decisions, we estimate the viewership demand elasticity, returns to scale in production, and analyze the factors and efficiency of doctor's decisions and their implications. Estimates of the structural parameters explain observed heterogeneity in doctors' choice, frequency and intensity, and understand how participation in the online platform drives the change of doctor ranking/reputation/productivity. Counterfactual simulations allow us to evaluate various policy interventions and quantify the aggregate benefit for the health care providers.
