What about HealthTap? February 11, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
I guess you have heard about HealthTap, I even saw Ron Gutman’s talk at Stanford a few months ago. I’ve never thought that letting patients ask questions and letting physicians answer these questions without providing clear credentials, without knowing or seeing the patient in person is a good idea. To be clear, I think it’s a very dangerous idea, because people will probably use the service and while this Q&A approach would work in all areas, medicine is an exception. Practicing medicine happens in person, through real doctor visits, or even when online communication between doctor and patient is encouraged, a first real meeting is required (remember the model of Jay Parkinson,MD?).
I just found a great article covering this issue. An excerpt:
[U]sers post questions and doctors post brief answers. The service is free, and the doctors aren’t paid. Instead, they engage in gamelike competitions, earning points and climbing numbered levels. They can also receive nonmonetary awards — many of them whimsically named, like the “It’s Not Brain Surgery” prize, earned for answering 21 questions at the site.
So far, so good. But there’s more. The professional credentials of the physician answering your question, such as a board-certified specialty, are not available on the site. Instead, you get a crowdsourced “reputation level” built up by accumulating HealthTap awards, by clicks of approval from other doctors and by other measurable activities at the site.
The advice itself is limited to 400 characters, a length the Times worries is “hardly well-suited for providing nuanced answers to some medical questions.”
I would love to hear what you think!
Enormous Chinese Medical Community: Which pharma company can succeed in China? January 12, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.add a comment
More than a year ago, I presented in details DXY.cn, a Chinese medical community site that has over 1.5 million registered users. After that entry, Stanley Li (Li Tian Tian), the founder of DXY.cn, gave me an interview about his idea and the service. Stanley will also attend the upcoming event of the year, Doctors 2.0 and You in Paris.
DXY.com recently conducted a large-scale, online survey of physicians (with 2218 physicians participating) to assess their recognition of the academic marketing approaches implemented by major international pharmaceutical companies. See the results below. An excerpt from the announcement:
International pharmaceutical companies have led the revolution in marketing models and tools. Since the entry of major international pharmaceutical companies into China, the academic style of marketing has gained rapid acceptance throughout the country. However, this “exotic” style of marketing needs to be adjusted to reflect both the unique culture and medical practice approach favored by Chinese physicians. Not all pharmaceutical companies are capable of succeeding at this. Physician perception of seemingly identical “academic marketing” strategies varies significantly. DXY.com recently conducted a large-scale, online survey of physicians to assess their recognition of the academic marketing approaches implemented by major international pharmaceutical companies.
Click on the image for a much larger version.
Talkswell, Whichdoc and Peer Reviewing the Internet November 10, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, Video, Web 2.0.3 comments
A few websites I’ve recently come across.
Using your social network, WhichDoc brings together doctor referrals from people you actually know and trust — your friends. The more friends you have using WhichDoc the more referrals you’ll have to help you make these tough choices. Three simple steps create a highly customized list of physicians who matched the criteria you’ve set.
Everyone should be a part of the health and wellness conversation, but not everyone has access to a platform that helps them share their wisdom or learn from others. Until now.
A new site, Hypothes.is, aims to be a peer-review system for the Internet. It will be a distributed, open-source platform for the collaborative evaluation of information and will allow us to parse and critique words across the internet at the sentence-level through community peer-review. (Hat tip: Sciencebase)
Mayo Connect: That’s how you launch an online community site August 5, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.2 comments
As a member of the external advisory board of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media I was happy to see the Mayo Connect community site from the first moments and I knew it was something special. Now The Online Community Guide posted a case study about this and had the same feelings:
It’s a good community concept. The Mayo Clinic has a clear target audience who have a motivation to interact with each other. There is plenty of room for improvement, however. If they were a client, here is what we would recommend:
1) Optimize the journey
2) Confirmation e-mail
3) Platform design
4) Discussion area
5) Social aspects.
Mayo Connect is one of the better online communities launched in recent months. It has a great concept and a good chance of success. Like most communities, however, it leaves plenty of room for both technical and social improvements.
New Medical Communities: Medcrowd, Doctors Global and Comp’act Onair August 2, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Video, Web 2.0.add a comment
There are now over 65 biomedical community sites in the list I’ve been updating for years. Here are the 3 new additions:
- Doctors Global: Doctors Global intends to facilitate physicians to collaborate across all boundaries, to share views, experience and learn new things from colleagues across the world every day in a secure environment.
- Comp’act Onair: An evidence-based practice bases clinical decisions on the best available evidence.
An online community for Mayo Clinic July 9, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, e-patient, Health, Health 2.0, Web 2.0.3 comments
As you may know it, I’m a big admirer of what Mayo Clinic does online and not just because I’m a member of the external advisory board of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media. Now they launched a community site with great goals:
We’re pleased to now be taking the next step, creating an online site to connect the global Mayo Clinic community. When you’re facing a health concern, sometimes, what you really need is someone who has already been there. That’s what this community is all about: connecting people who have been through the Mayo Clinic experience with others facing a similar health concern. Each year, more than 500,000 unique patients from every U.S. state and nearly 150 countries visit one of our Mayo Clinic campuses in Arizona, Florida or Minnesota for diagnosis and treatment. These patients, their families and friends, and Mayo Clinic’s 50,000 employees and students are part of the global Mayo Clinic community. This site provides a place for community members to share information, support and understanding.
The Mayo Clinic online community is free and is open to anyone, whether you have been a patient at Mayo Clinic or not. It includes content from various Mayo Clinic blogs, health and medical videos from Mayo’s YouTube channel and links to news articles about Mayo Clinic research and treatment advances. It also features a discussion forum where members can connect with others who have similar interests or concerns.
From MedCrowd to VoxMed: New Communities July 5, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, Web 2.0.2 comments
I’ve been maintaining a list of biomedical community sites for years now and the number is well above 60! Here are the newest additions:
MedCrowd: Market Research and Insight: Solve problems by collaborating directly with diverse healthcare experts
VoxMed: VoxMed is the worldwide online community reserved for the medical profession.
Sequilab: a leap forward for genetic researchers using online bioinformatics tools.
eClinic: Speak for Your Health June 16, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Video, Web 2.0.add a comment
I’ve been updating a list of medical/scientific video sites for years and here is the newest addition, eClinic, a video directory for physicians and medical questions.
eClinic was founded by David Buck in 2009 while he was a medical student at Tufts University. eClinic was created to extend the knowledge and therapeutic touch of trusted physicians beyond the office setting.
We are passionate about improving health in innovative ways. And we hope that eClinic can compliment in-person counseling with online patient education.
Human Health Project: Getting Feedback on Cases June 13, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Video, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
Human Health Project is a non-profit organization funded by donations aiming at giving feedback on medical cases uploaded by medical professionals. Here is the description:
The Human Health Project began in California in 2006 as a non-profit organization when its founder, Dr. Phil Harrington, M.D., decided to create a platform for medical professionals to discuss rare and unusual health problems. The idea came from personal experience – for three years he went from doctor to doctor and struggled to find a diagnosis for his own illness. Even with access to modern healthcare and a background in medicine, the answers were still elusive, and the process was frustrating. For someone without the same access to healthcare, such as a patient in a developing nation, the challenge would have been even greater. This experience was telling of the lack of integration among the medical sciences and sparked the idea for the Human Health Project.
ResearchGate Celebrates One Million Users June 5, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, science, Video, Web 2.0.add a comment
ResearchGATE, the largest scientific community site, where I used to manage the Masterblog, now announced its one millionth user which is a fantastic achievement. Congratulations to them!
