Social Media Takes Health Care By Storm
Sermo (http://www.sermo.com), the fastest growing online community created by physicians for physicians, has already seen the impact of its mission to improve patient care positively influencing the practice of medicine in the U.S. Thousands of Physicians across all specialties are now relying on Sermo regularly to ask questions of each other and post observations – sharing hard-hitting medical insights and treatment advice – 24/7. Since launching just 10 weeks ago, Sermo has experienced exponential growth with thousands of physicians, in over 30 specialties and from all 50 states, joining the forum. Members are now logging more than 600 hours per week in total usage, which continues to grow 20 percent week over week. In addition, registered users are increasing at an average weekly rate of 17 percent.
On Sermo, important observations, termed “signals,” are separated from “noise” by physicians nationwide, who corroborate or dispute, and rank the importance of each observation. The Sermo system reports the consensus in real-time and physician interest pushes the most important issues to the top. This means the time it takes for an initial observation to move from the individual physician to valuable, actionable information (broadly vetted by and disseminated throughout the medical community) can be as short as a few hours. Previously, this could take months, and for large numbers, even years. The result is better patient care and improved outcomes through earlier insight.
“Sermo is an extremely valuable resource that is now a part of my daily routine - I believe it will make a dramatic improvement in the medical community,” said Dr. Jason Jaronik, an emergency medicine physician at St Joe Regional Medical Center in South Bend, Indiana. “The ability to quickly log on and receive multiple insights to a question is an informal - yet extremely effective - way to continue my medical education by learning from other physicians who share insights based on their experiences. I recently posted a question about a patient who had corneal abrasions and received an answer within minutes from an ophthalmologist who recommended something that I had not been offering – it helped the patient and taught me a new technique, instantly.”
Recent questions from physicians show the variety of topics discussed on Sermo:
- Should we do CT angiography instead of an LP in acute headaches?
- How do you screen for asymptomatic ischemic heart disease?
- For cirrhotics would you use fresh frozen plasma or albumin as a colloid?
- Shouldn’t a patient be on an 80mg dose of Lipitor after a myocardial infarction?
- Should lithium be the initial treatment for Bipolar Disorder?
- Does vitamin D supplementation reduce the risk of type 1 diabetes?
- Has anyone seen large pulmonary emboli develop after treatment with Factor activated VII?
- Should we be screening for lung cancer with CT scans in high-risk populations?
“Sermo is great not only for posting my own observations and thoughts, but for quickly receiving quality insight and information to questions that arise or situations that are new to us and in which someone from the Sermo community might have experience,” said Dr. Erik A. Maus, an Assistant Professor in the Hermann Center for Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine at the University of Texas in Houston. “I have received a good amount of quality insights on some very perplexing situations – Sermo allows me to communicate and ask questions of other colleagues all over the nation who are involved in patient care – the freedom to exchange insights in a protected community has been invaluable. The more minds involved in medicine, the better.”
By Physicians, For Physicians
Collaborative wisdom has long been a fixture in medicine, but grand rounds, the doctor’s lounge, and even cafeterias are no longer venues in which physicians consult with their colleagues as they have in the past. Significantly, with the trend towards outpatient care in America’s healthcare system, physicians have lost everyday opportunities to share ideas and compare experiences with their colleagues.
At Sermo, physicians offer medical insights, learn from each other’s experiences, and most importantly, discuss how they can improve patient care. With the ability to easily ask questions of thousands of colleagues nationwide, physicians find that Sermo instantly expands their treatment arsenal. Even professionals in the most remote of areas – where resources and colleagues are often limited - can leverage the collective brainpower of colleagues across specialties and practice settings, from office-based to hospital and academic teaching institutions.
“Our fast growth and high adoption rate demonstrate a clear information void among physicians,” said Daniel Palestrant, Founder and CEO, Sermo. “Building consensus around any healthcare or medical issue today is a slow and arduous process. Sermo is changing this by giving physicians their own collective voice and allowing them to work together, in real-time, to deliver the best ‘front line’ medicine possible.”
About Sermo
Launched September 2006, Sermo is already the fastest growing online community, created by physicians for physicians. Its Web-based platform provides a medium for physicians to aggregate observations from daily practice then — rapidly and in large numbers — challenge or corroborate each other’s opinions, accelerating the discovery of emerging trends and new insights on medications, devices, and treatments. Through Sermo, physicians exchange knowledge with each other the minute it is learned, and gain insights from colleagues as they happen instead of waiting to read about them in conventional media sources. Sermo harnesses the power of collective wisdom and enables physicians to discuss new clinical findings, report unusual events, and work together to dramatically impact patient care. For more information visit www.sermo.com.
Sermo recently partnered with the AMA which seems exciting but at the same time troubling. Sermo effectively provides a bulletin board for physicians. Though certain trends can be analyzed, do we really want our physicians to be heavily influenced by postings or the latest clinical data in JAMA?
Physicians in teaching hospitals typically engage in the hard work of reading literature and truly collaborating with colleagues. I worry that systems such as Sermo will lull physicians to perform a digital “group think”.
I think that physicians should start to use a system that facilitates exchange of annotations of medical journal articles. I found Healtheva.com to be a Digg of sorts for medical literature. Healtheva counts both physicians and researchers in its member base. Another alternative would be Organized Wisdom which enables the sharing of information in a structured way. To me, organizing published research is a necessary first step for responsible exchange of ideas.