AI Insight
This study analyzed 97,034 Google Play reviews of Sehhaty, Saudi Arabia's national digital health platform, to develop a comprehensive framework for understanding patient experience. The analysis identified nine distinct dimensions of patient experience and found that satisfaction varied considerably across different healthcare services, with improvement priorities being service-specific rather than uniform. Over time, patient concerns shifted from primarily technical issues during initial deployment to challenges involving service accessibility, integration, and continuity of care as the platform matured.
Why it matters
The multidimensional framework provides healthcare administrators with actionable evidence for prioritizing improvements in digital health platforms based on actual patient feedback rather than simple ratings. This approach enables continuous, patient-centered evaluation of national digital health services and can guide resource allocation toward service-specific quality improvements.
Understand the Science
by Abdulmohsen Saud Albesher
National digital health platforms are becoming fundamental components of modern healthcare delivery; however, patient experience is commonly assessed using overall ratings or sentiment analysis, providing limited understanding of the specific dimensions that influence digital healthcare quality and service improvement. This study aimed to develop a multidimensional framework for understanding patient experience in a national digital health platform, examine variation across healthcare services, investigate changes over time, and identify evidence-based improvement priorities. A qualitative analysis was conducted using 97,034 Google Play reviews of Sehhaty, the Saudi national digital health platform, posted between 2019 and 2026. Reviews were analyzed using an inductive coding approach to develop a patient experience framework, followed by comparative analyses across healthcare services and longitudinal analyses across successive stages of platform development. Nine patient experience dimensions were identified. Patient experience differed considerably across healthcare services, indicating that improvement priorities were service-specific rather than uniform across the platform. Longitudinal analyses showed a shift from predominantly technical concerns during early deployment toward challenges involving service accessibility, integration, continuity of care, as the platform matured. These findings enabled the identification of service-specific priorities for improving digital healthcare delivery. Patient experience in national digital health platforms is multidimensional, service-dependent, and evolves alongside platform maturity. The proposed framework extends approaches based primarily on ratings or sentiment by transforming large-scale patient-generated feedback into actionable evidence for healthcare quality improvement and continuous evaluation of patient-centered digital health services.