December 12th, 2010 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion
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I suspect that in the next couple of years we’ll see the emergence of a viable social network for physicians. It hasn’t happened yet, but I suspect that we’re getting close. Physicians are increasingly dabbling in mainstream social sites.
But maybe that’s a problem. After all, a doctor can only hang in so many places. If you have “The Facebook for Doctors,” do you expect us to spend our time there instead of on Facebook itself? Maybe we will, and maybe we won’t.
Beyond the obvious requirement of a network to deliver value, I think the rate-limiting factor is old-fashioned bandwidth. You can only be one place at a time. If I spend my days on Twitter, I’m not likely to spend my days on said doctor’s network. I will go there for particular things and to talk to certain people about specific issues, but like most doctors I’m not sure I can tell you exactly what I want. I’ll know it when I see it. (Actually I do, but I’m keeping it tip-top secret.) Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
November 11th, 2010 by Berci in Better Health Network, News, Research
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medCrowd is the 52nd in my list of biomedical community sites and maybe the first one using crowdsourcing. From medCrowd:
Perhaps, you have a patient with a rare condition and you don’t know the best treatment. Or you are treating a patient and you have heard there have been recent developments in the field, but you are not sure how these actually affect your patient’s day-to-day management.
The problem is finding the best solution for your patient. What you need is help finding it.
medCrowd enables you to find the best solution for your patient by collecting your peers’ professional opinions, simply and in one place. This is called crowdsourcing.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
June 21st, 2010 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, News, Opinion
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Should you friend your doctor on Facebook? It’s a question that’s gaining increasing relevance as Facebook increases its social networking dominance. I’ve touched upon the issue in the past. So has the New England Journal of Medicine.
Washington, DC, physician Katherine Chretian gives her take on the issue in a recent USA Today op-ed. She is an expert of the Facebook-medicine intersection, having authored a JAMA study on the issue.
She says, no, doctors should not be friending their patients:
Having a so-called dual relationship with a patient — that is, a financial, social or professional relationship in addition to the therapeutic relationship — can lead to serious ethical issues and potentially impair professional judgment. We need professional boundaries to do our job well.
Furthermore, there’s the little matter of patient privacy and HIPAA. I wasn’t aware of this, but simply becoming Facebook friends with patients can infringe upon uncertain ground. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
June 15th, 2010 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Better Health Network, News, Opinion
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If you’ve come to believe that physicians and social networks aren’t a good combination, check out this teaser from the up-and-coming physician network, iMedExchange.
While facilitated physician networks have been a difficult sell, iMedExchange appears to be delivering a fresh, expandable, next-generation platform that will offer real value for discerning doctors.
iMedExchange went into expanded beta beginning yesterday. If you were an iMed user before, watch your inbox and give it a test drive. Keep an eye on this one. I’ve had a look. It’s very nice and I understand the best is yet to come.
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
I suspect that in the next couple of years we’ll see the emergence of a viable social network for physicians. It hasn’t happened yet, but I suspect that we’re getting close. Physicians are increasingly dabbling in mainstream social sites.
