MedScape Today: The Creative Destruction of Medicine
Originally posted July 17, 2012
Here are some excerpts:
Everybody is familiar with Facebook, which soon will have 1 billion registrants and be second only to China and India as far as a community or population. What isn't so much appreciated by the medical community is that our patients are turning to online health social networking. These are such Websites as PatientsLikeMe, CureTogether, and many others.
Interestingly, patients with like conditions -- often chronic conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, diabetes, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) -- will find patients with the same condition on these networking sites. And these virtual peers will become very much a key guidance source. This is so different from the past, when all information emanated from physicians. In fact, now many of these individuals who use social networks trust their virtual peers more than their physicians, so this is a real change that's taken place. In addition to this, the social networking platforms, which are free, offer an opportunity we haven't seen before.
