Construction and operation of WeChat public platforms sponsored by community health service centers in Beijing

  Objective  To examine the construction and operation of the WeChat public platforms sponsored by community health service centers (CHSCs) in Beijing and to provide evidences for promoting the application of WeChat public platform in health care services.

  Methods  We collected general information about 344 CHSCs in Beijing via the official website of Beijing Community Health Service from January to March 2019; opening time, certification, updating duration, number and influence of distributed materials of the WeChat public platforms sponsored by the CHSCs were collected simultaneously through mobile WeChat application (APP) for subsequent analyses.

  Results  The number of CHSCs with their WeChat platforms increased by 20 times from 11 in 2014 to 231 in 2018. In March 2019, there were 239 (69.5%) CHSCs establishing 279 WeChat public platforms. Of all the established WeChat public platforms, 236 (84.6%) were certificated by WeChat; 171 (61.3%) had the updating duration of less than 30 days; 54 (19.4%) distributed more than 150 informative materials per year. From January 1st through 31st, 2018, totally 756 informative materials were distributed by 28 of the WeChat public platforms; among the distributed materials, 420 (55.6%) were about popular health knowledge; 194 (25.7%) were about hospital operation and management; 65 (8.6%) were notices and announcements; 43 (5.7%) were about construction of administrative agencies; and 34 (4.5%) were other information. There were significant disparities in opening time, certification, updating duration, number of materials distributed, web pages viewed, and number of thumbs-up among the WeChat platforms sponsored by the CHSCs in different regions (urban, suburban and outer suburban) of Beijing (P < 0.05 for all).

  Conclusion  The construction of WeChat public platforms sponsored by community health service centers is good and rapid in Beijing municipality but there are still some aspects (including regional disparity in the construction, lack of post-maintenance, and insufficient attention to the platforms among the public) need to be improved.