Social Web: Web 2.0 Technologies to Enhance Knowledge Communities - Community-Built Databases: Research and Development - page 8

to collaborate, exchange information and share knowledge”. Jessen's definition
focuses on scientific collaborative aspects of knowledge generation and use in health
care provision. As Abidi et al. [ 18 ] argue, to generate holistic health care knowledge,
it is important to augment the explicit knowledge with the context-specific experi-
ential knowledge. And to encourage collaboration between the health care profes-
sionals, such as doctors, biomedical researchers, and other health care professionals,
Web 2.0 technologies can be very advantageous.
There are several sites that promote the exchange of information among the
health care professionals. One of the notable names in this category is Sermo ( http://
www.sermo.com/ ). Sermo is a social network through which physicians exchange
information and collaborate (see Fig. 1.1 ). It is a community with more than 112,000
members where they communicate in detail with each other about clinical and
nonclinical issues. According to Sermo's website - “it's where practicing US physicians -
spanning 68 specialties and all 50 states - collaborate on difficult cases and exchange
observations about drugs, devices and clinical issues”. Sermo is assisted by its survey
and ratings tools that are among the most advanced anywhere on the web [ 19 ].
Syndicom SpineConnect ( http://www.syndicom.com/spineconnect/ ) is the lead-
ing collaborative knowledge network for spine surgeons to collaborate on difficult
and unusual cases. According to this site, every day thousands of spine surgeons
from around the world log on to SpineConnect “to share knowledge, develop novel
approaches to treatment, address the top challenges in spine health care, and create
technological solutions that address voids in the current marketplace with the under-
lying goal of improving patient outcomes”. With simple and intuitive “case wizard”
features, SpineConnect enables surgeons to obtain feedback on complicated patient
cases quickly and securely from some of the world's foremost authorities in spine
surgery. Another feature of SpineConnect is ResearchEdge PN. It is a unique web-
based tool for conducting case-based research which provides a secure environment
Fig. 1.1 Sermo
Source : MacManus [ 19 ]