According to a recent MDsearch survey, physicians are no strangers to Facebook. Two-thirds of the responding physicians confessed to having Facebook profiles. Like the rest of us, they enjoy connecting with friends and family online. But do online communities appeal to physicians on a professional level? The abundance of online communities for physicians and other healthcare providers suggests a strong interest from the healthcare community, but is there value in these exclusive communities for physicians? And are these online communities succeeding in their efforts to attract physician members?

So Many Choices

The number of online communities for healthcare providers and/or physicians continues to grow. They range from the truly exclusive sites like Sermo, an online community with an extensive credential verification process, to DocsBoard, an online forum requiring members to enter their license numbers, to sites like Tiromed, which asks registrants to affirm their physician or med student status on an honor system. Other sites such as MedScape and medXcentral are open to physicians as well as other healthcare professionals and do not require any proof of professional status.

But the choices don’t stop there –

Check Out the Growing List of Online Communities for Physicians:

-Clinical Village – online network for medical community
-DocnDoc – online community for physicians
-DocsBoard – message boards for licensed physicians
-Doctors Hangout – online community for medical students, residents, and physicians
-DrConnected – online network for physicians and healthcare professionals
-iMedExhange – online community for residents, physicians, and retired physicians
-Medical Passions – online dating site for the medical community
-MedScape – online community for healthcare providers
-MedicSpeak – online community for medical students and physicians
-medXcentral – online community for all healthcare professionals, as well as healthcare recruiters
-MomMD – online community for women in medicine
-New Media Medicine – message boards for med school applicants, medical students, and physicians
-Ozmosis – online community for licensed physicians only
-Relax Doc – online community for physicians only
-Sermo – online community for licensed physicians only
-StudentDoc – online community for medical students
-Tiromed – online community for physicians and students of medicine

Is There Value in Online Physician Communities?

Choices abound for physicians seeking online networking opportunities, but what exactly is the value in these communities? Perhaps the most obvious benefit is the capacity of these sites to facilitate instant “curbside consults” among physicians all over the country. Instead of a physician making a phone call to another physician for advice, doctors can turn to their online network and get real time feedback from multiple physicians. In this way, online communities for physicians have a direct benefit to patients.

Additionally, online communities provide a support system to busy physicians who don’t have the time to attend conferences and other live networking functions. These sites allow physicians to discuss common frustrations from the professional to the personal.

Follow the Leader

While there is an abundance of options for physicians seeking an online community, one network has emerged as the clear leader – Sermo. Touting more than 112,000 physician members, Sermo claims to be more of a voice for the physician community than the American Medical Association. This claim, along with a somewhat controversial business model, has kept Sermo consistently in the national headlines.

While the network itself is exclusively for physicians, Sermo makes a profit by selling data to healthcare companies who are interested in learning what physicians think. They also make public particularly interesting conversation threads – such as a recent chain of posts from nearly 500 physicians discussing the problems of maintaining a successful solo practice. Sermo turned regarded the comment thread as an informal survey and issued a press release announcing, “26% of solo practitioners polled on Sermo have been forced to close due to financial hardships.”

Providing this type of insight into the physician community has proven to be a successful business model for Sermo, and because identities are kept private, it doesn’t seem to concern the still growing number physician members. But with Sermo dominating the online physician network space, how are the other online physician communities faring?

Like Sermo, MedScape claims over 100,000 members, but due to their open registration process, it is impossible to know how many of those members are physicians. On a smaller scale, sites with a distinct niche seem to be faring well with the audiences they target. MomMD has over 8,000 registered members and has established a solid reputation among female physicians. Online networks targeting specialists, such as CardiologyRounds, are also gaining some traction.

On the other hand, it seems many social networks for physicians could be here today and gone tomorrow. SocialMD, DoctorNetworking, and Healtheva have all been recently discussed as the next big thing in social networking for physicians, but as of this writing they are nowhere to be found.

Conclusion

It seems the number of physicians joining exclusive online communities is on the rise. The advice and information resulting from the discourse within these communities appears to be benefitting everyone involved – from the physicians themselves, to the patients they treat, to the companies “listening” to the conversations, to the public at large. For this reason, it seems these communities will continue to gain members. But will Sermo remain the leader in this space, or will another physician community eventually take over? In the ever-evolving world of online media, only time will tell.

Author Bio: Robyn Melhuish is the Communications Manager at Healthcare Job Boards. The HJB portfolio of premier job boards includes niche sites for physician jobs, therapist jobs, nursing jobs, medical sales jobs, and medical mission opportunities.

Category: Medical Business
Keywords: physicians, online communities, physician jobs, physician careers, social networking