As a Canadian I have always been a bit envious of Americans for their physician social networking sites like Sermo and Web MD. Thousands of like-minded physicians in a confidential, doctor-only site who can exchange ideas without the prying eyes of government and pharma and with somewhat less worry about patient confidentiality. A recent article in Newsweek (via DB's Medical Rants) has cast doubt on all of that. It appears that these sites are now selling information gleaned from these sites to the pharmaceutical industry. I guess it's only normal in that these sites are businesses and have to find a way to make the whole endeavour profitable, but it sure takes away much of it's allure.
In Canada, I've discovered, the Canadian Medical Association has taken the lead on this issue. They have started their own MD social network called Asklepios (Greek for: what was that name again?) It is probably along the same lines but has so far not been hugely successful as far as I can tell. It has about 1400 members so far and the groups are fairly sparsely populated. Book club- 11 members, I-Phone group-22 members. Of the fifty or so groups formed so far, ten are founded by the same guy. Oh well, it's a start . But most importantly, the site is hosted by the Canadian Medical Association and so I doubt it'll soon be selling off my comments to the highest bidder.
Another site you might be interested in is myhospitalcare.ca. This site, recently launched by the Ontario Health Association, allows members of the public to genuinely understand how their local hospital is performing, and takes what used to be complex and dense information and translates it into clear, plain language that is easy to access, read and understand.
To learn more, please register for this free webinar.
Posted by: myhospitalcare | April 17, 2009 at 02:55 PM