Bilateral bifoveate retina in a human resembling lizard foveal architecture.

The concept of an Internet hospital emerged in 2014 in China, and generally refers to a service platform that integrates consultation, prescription, payment, and drug delivery based on brick-and-mortar hospitals with a focus on online follow-up and routine consultations. In 2018, the Chinese government stipulated Internet hospitals must be established on the basis of physical hospitals focusing on follow-up medical servicesand routine clinical consultations. These hospitals have been growing rapidly in China, and have beenexpected to improve the national availability and accessibility of medical resources while controlling the costs of distant medical services. Subsequently, the Chinese government implemented various political interventions to promote the development and expansion of Internet hospitals . The COVID-19 pandemic also accelerated the development and acceptance of remote medical care, for which Internet hospitals played a key role. To date, more than 1,700 Chinese Internet hospitals have been established that offer a range of services, including: patient registration, appointments, guided triage, and referral at the pre-visit stage; online consultation, remote payment, and medical records enquiry across institutions during treatment; and chronic prescription management, drug delivery, patient management, and remote health education after treatment. These services are based on various digital platforms for Internet hospitals, such as smartphone applications or mini programs built into social media (e.g., WeChat or Alipay). The service quality of the Internet hospital platform directly impacted healthcare professionals’ actual operational experiences, which in turn affected the satisfaction of both healthcare professionals and their patients. The rapid growth of Chinese Internet hospitals was accompanied by an urgent need for systematic service evaluation to supervise and guide their development and application. However, to our knowledge, little research attention has been directed towards such evaluation. Previous studies in Western countries largely focused on patients’ evaluation of the service quality of Internet hospitals, but did not consider healthcare professionals as users of Internet hospitals services (and associated platforms). However, healthcare professionals use Internet hospital platforms to set up on-call schedules, manage patients’ visits, deliver (chronic) prescriptions, and provide post-treatment healthcare. Healthcare professionals’ user experiences are therefore as important as those of patients, as their experiences determine their use of Internet hospital services and offer critical insights into the long-term development of the industry.