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This study aims to test a conceptual model using public attitudes toward biomedicine and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to predict respondents’ medical treatment choice.

A quantitative online survey was conducted using quota sampling. Altogether 1,321 questionnaires from Hong Kong residents of age 15 years or above were collected.

Attitudes toward biomedicine in relation to TCM and perceived cost of TCM consultation were found to be significant variables in predicting respondents’ medical treatment choice of treatment. Perceived efficacy of TCM, however, was not a significant predictor. Older respondents, as well as respondents with higher education, were less likely to consult biomedicine first when ill. They were also less likely to consult biomedicine exclusively.

This study uses a convenience sample recruited through personal networks. The findings cannot be generalized to the rest of the population.

Respondents in the study generally perceived TCM’s efficacy to be high, but not high enough to make it the medical treatment of choice. To promote TCM in Hong Kong, there is a need to enhance trust in it. This can be achieved through strengthening scientific research and development of TCM, enhancing professional standards of TCM practitioners and educating the public about the qualifications of TCM practitioners. Strategic channel planning to reach potential target and reducing the time cost of TCM medication should be examined.

The study is the first to relate attitudes to and perceptions of TCM with medical treatment choices in Hong Kong.

Infection and cross-contamination have been massive concerns in the medical field. This study aims to investigate consumers’ awareness and their choices of endoscopes, which may deter them from the cross-contamination problem.

A discrete choice experiment survey was administered to 166 respondents in Penang, Malaysia. Participants were asked to make hypothetical choices and estimate their preference for endoscopes. The multinomial logit model was used to estimate the assumptions based on the stated preference data collected.

Only two-fifths of respondents are aware of their rights regarding endoscope selection. The findings are consistent with utility theory, where choices are made to maximise personal satisfaction. If given the choice, consumers preferred the single-use endoscope over the reusable or the doctor’s preferred endoscope. Price, insurance coverage and personal income are significant determinants of the consumer’s choice of endoscopes.

This study only investigates subjects living in Penang. Other possible important attributes to endoscope choices, such as environmental and device availability may be considered in future study.

The findings may create awareness among consumers about their rights when choosing medical devices. It may also improve health-care institutions’ (users’) and device manufacturers’ (industry players’) understanding of consumer needs and demands from socioeconomic perspectives.

The research offers insights into consumer rights and awareness of health-care services. Ultimately leading to better policy to protect consumers’ rights and safety.

This study contributes to the rare literature on consumer rights toward medical devices, in particular, the consumer’s awareness of the choice of endoscopes.

The study aims to facilitate the medical tourists visiting emerging countries for various kinds of ailments by ranking the possible destinations to avail medical treatments.

A Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process (FAHP) with a mixed-method approach is applied to analyze data collected from patients and substantiate it with medical tour operators in India to gain managerial insights on the choice-making patterns of the patients.

India is a preferred emerging market location due to the low cost and high medical staff quality. India offers value for money, whereas Singapore and Thailand are preferred destinations for quality and technology.

The study will facilitate the emerging markets' governments, hospitals and medical tourists to understand the importance of various determinants responsible for availing medical treatment outside their country.

The study recommends that cost and quality care are the patients' prime focus; government policies must provide clear guidelines on what the hospitals and country environment can offer and accordingly align the marketing strategies.

This study is the first attempt to rank various factors affecting medical tourism using the FAHP approach.

The purpose of this study is to identify medical service quality factors that patients care about and establish a medical service quality evaluation index system by analyzing online reviews of medical and healthcare service platforms in combination with a questionnaire survey.

This study adopts a combination of review mining and questionnaire surveys. The latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model was used to mine hospital reviews on the medical and healthcare service platform to obtain the medical service quality factors that patients pay attention to, and then the questionnaire was administered to obtain the relative importance of these factors to patients' perception of service quality. Finally, the index system was established.

The medical service quality factors patients care about include medical skills and ethics, registration service, operation effect, consulting communication, drug therapy, diagnosis process and medical equipment.

The identification of medical service quality factors provides a reference for medical institutions to improve their medical service quality.

This study uses online review mining to obtain medical service quality factors from the perspective of patients, which is different from previous methods of obtaining factors from relevant literature or expert judgments; then, based on the mining results, a medical service quality evaluation index system is established by using questionnaire data.

This paper aims to find in-depth information related the activities of “clean and healthy behavior” in household regulations, starting from assessment, planning, mobilization, implementation monitoring and assessment.

Data analysis was used for quantitative and qualitative approaches (mixing method). The qualitative approach was used to understand the individual phenomena in terms of finding, obtaining and describing the community behavior, which is related to health problems. The data obtained through the approach were then analyzed using interactive model.

In principle, this research exactly determines the responses of officers and the community to the process of “clean and healthy living behavior” activities. In general, the health facility used first is self-treatment, before seeking medical treatment or non-drug treatment. It proves that humans are always experimenting. From the research result, there are respondents who do not use medical treatment at 16 per cent; and the remaining 84 per cent are using medical treatment, despite being preceded by self-treatment (S) and non-medical treatment (N).

Currently, there have not been many studies related to the implementation of clean and healthy behavior although the information about it is very important to know. The managers of the “clean and healthy behavior” program need to know such information.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the externality that arises from environmental tobacco smoke damage is no ordinary externality. Apart from acting to the detriment of passive smokers, tobacco smoking also affects the survival probabilities of smokers. Incorporating this into its analysis, this paper evaluates the damage caused by smoking, the appropriate design of public health policies and tax policies targeted at reducing tobacco‐related externalities.

By mathematically characterising how smoking impacts smokers and non‐smokers differently, the paper determines smokers' and non‐smokers' lifetime utility, enabling one to evaluate the impact of both health interventions and tax policies.

The paper shows that treatment as well as research and development leading to life‐prolonging health outcomes for smokers are generally oversupplied. The tax recommendations, however, are far from straightforward. Indeed, although not universally the case, it may be optimal to subsidise tobacco usage. The paper also discusses the separating conditions necessary for cigarette taxation to fall or rise with time.

It follows from the paper that ignoring the effect that smoking has on smokers' own life expectancy may lead to erroneous theoretical results and misguided policy recommendations.

The paper seeks to rectify the omission that smoking is somewhat different from other externalities. It develops a model where smoking results in both self‐harm and harm to others, enabling one to demonstrate that there is more to the theoretical study of this externality than is currently acknowledged in the literature.

The Covid-19 pandemic has persisted for almost three years. States have since then enforced laws, policies and measures believed to be the most effective to handle the global pandemic. Along this line, the Indonesian Government opted to implement mandatory vaccination and refusal of which entails monetary penalties. Hence, this study aims to analyze two legal issues that touch upon the realm of International Human Rights Law: first, whether state has the authority to implement the said mandatory vaccine program to those who refuse to be vaccinated, and second, how is the more appropriate legal policy to obligate vaccination but without coercive sanction.

This is a normative legal research that uses a qualitative method with case studies, conceptual, historical and comparative approaches. A descriptive-analytical deduction process was used in analyzing the issue.

The results present, as part of state’s right to regulate, it has the authority to enact mandatory vaccination with monetary penalties to fulfil its obligation to protect public health in times of emergency; this is legal and constitutional but only if it satisfies the requirements under the International Human Rights Law: public health necessity, reasonableness, proportionality and harm avoidance. Alternatively, herd immunity is achievable without deploying unnecessary coercive sanctions, such as improving public channels of communication and information, adopting legal policies that incentivize people’s compliance like exclusion from public services, subsidies revocation, employment restrictions, higher health insurance premiums, etc.

This study analyzes in depth the following issues: of whether the government has the authority to apply mandatory vaccination laws enforced through monetary penalties for those who refused to be vaccinated and how does the government implement the appropriate legal policy to enforce mandatory vaccination without imposing penalties for non-compliance while maintaining a balance between the interests of protecting public health and the human rights of individuals to choose medical treatment for themselves, including whether they are willing to be vaccinated. Hence, the political affairs, economic matters and other non-legal related issues are excluded from this study.

This paper hence offers a suggestive insight for state in formulating a policy relating to the mandatory vaccination program. Although the monetary penalties do not directly violate the rule of law, a more non-coercive approach to the society would be more favorable.

In December 1989, the Government of Kenya implemented cost sharing reforms in a substantial portion of public health facilities. In September 1990 the Government suspended registration fees for out‐patient treatments, but reintroduced them in April 1992 after a lapse of a 20‐month period. Assesses the effects of these policy changes on demand for out‐patient services using a small data set from a rural district in central Kenya. Finds that, although medical services are inelastic with respect to user charges, cost sharing led to a significant reduction in out‐patient attendance: demand for out‐patient care declined by about 40 per cent. Consistent with this finding, suspension of registration fees in 1990 is associated with a 30 per cent increase in attendance. This increase occurred despite the retention of fees for diagnostic services. By March 1991, seven months after the suspension of fees, service demand had recovered remarkably and was only about 20 per cent below its original level. Further, finds that patients are more sensitive to fees for diagnostic services than they are to registration fees.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a complete medical healthcare system that encompasses acupuncture, acupressure, moxibustion, herbal medicine, diet, tui na massage, and exercises (tai chi and qigong) among other traditional therapies. It uses herbs and natural resources to produce the traditional medicines and focuses on maintaining the balance between body and mind. As such, many aspects of TCM can be considered as green and sustainable. While there is market demand for TCM in some countries and among some communities, some others are still not aware of TCM. Moreover, there are fewer discussions in the academic platforms on TCM. This case highlights the scenario of TCM based on Malaysia’s perspective and discusses its challenges and prospects.

With the advent of the Digital 2.0 era, online doctor–patient (D–P) interaction has become increasingly popular. However, due to the fact that doctors use their fragmented time to serve patients, online D–P interaction inevitably has some problems, such as the lack of pertinence in the reply content and doctors' relative unfamiliarity with their individual patients. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to excavate whether potential D–P social ties and D–P knowledge ties accentuate or attenuate the influence of patient selection (online and offline selection).

The authors used the methods of text mining and empirical analysis on the structured and unstructured data of an online consultation platform in China to examine the research hypotheses.

The findings illustrate that the potential D–P social ties increase the influence on patient selection, as do the potential D–P knowledge ties. Specifically, the effect of social ties on patient selection is positively moderated by patient health literacy. Conversely, health literacy weakens the link between knowledge ties and patient selection. In addition, the doctor's title weakens the influence of social ties on patient selection, in contrast to knowledge ties (partially).

This study provides guidance for doctors and patients on how to communicate effectively and alleviate tension within D–P relationships. The study’s findings have both theoretical and practical implications for both doctors' and online platforms' decision-making.