Sermo is the latest entry (as of 2006) into an increasingly crowded
physician community space. The idea here is a little different than
the standard physician site - at least in the early stages of the
site, Sermo is paying physicians for insights.
Part discussion forum, part networking tool Sermo bills itself
as way to turn the physician watercooler into a permanent resource.
This project has the seeds of something promising. There is a
growing revolt in academic medicine over the traditional means of
disseminating clinical information - journal articles. The peer-review
process is inherently flawed, and the rewards structure for authors
does not produce the proper incetive for quality publications -
just for large quantities of publications. CME courses make up for
much of the quality gap, condensing the most relevant information
into credit-worthy information. But even this avenue is biased toward
profitable drugs, with a lot of free
CME courses sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.
So Sermo, and other live-peer systems like Digg, enter the fray.
In the long term this is likely to be the way to go, but it is not
yet clear if Sermo will be a major player. For starters, there appears
to be no way for quality control. This is an important consideration,
especially in clinical medicine. Even carefully controlled studies
with statistical power and a bevy of professional consultants often
get mucked up with bias, is it reasonable to think two or three
similar observations will be enough to justify changing your treatment
regimen?
On the other hand, there is a place for experience and anectdote.
If Sermo can generate a large enough database with several repetitions,
it can become a useful adjunct to more traditional clinical references.
Regardless, Sermo seems to be a sufficiently unique approach to
medical informatics that its worth watching. We'll check back in
the fall of 2007.
Other new physician community sites
NetDoc.com - physician resources
for docs in small practices.
Resources
- sermo
- An online community looking to circumvent the traditional
routes of communicating between physicians.
