Success Factors of Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns: Systematic Review

Background: Medical crowdfunding provides opportunities for individuals who lack financial resources to access the health services that they need. Despite the popularity of medical crowdfunding, the current understanding of the success of medical crowdfunding campaigns is fragmented and inadequate. Objective: We aimed to comprehensively investigate which factors lead to the success of medical crowdfunding campaigns. Methods: A search was conducted in PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science, ACM Digital Library, and ScienceDirect from 2010 to June 2020. Papers directly and indirectly related to the success of medical crowdfunding campaigns were included. Two reviewers independently extracted information on the success of medical crowdfunding campaigns. Results: Our search yielded 441 articles, of which 13 met the inclusion criteria. Medical crowdfunding is increasingly attracting academic attention, and most studies leverage text analysis as their research methods; however, there is a lack of consensus on the definition of medical crowdfunding among researchers. Four categories of factors that affect the success of medical crowdfunding were identified: platforms, raisers, donors, and campaigns. Conclusions: Although some limitations exist in our systematic review, our study captured and mapped literatures of the success of medical crowdfunding campaigns systematically, which can be used as the basis for future research on this topic.