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Overview
The recent growth of online social networks has been remarkable, with sites such as MySpace, Linked-In and Orkut receiving millions, and even tens of millions of members. A variety of other networking sites have been developed as well, serving specific user communities. Along these lines, MyMedwork is an online social network site that enables health professionals to easily connect, collaborate, and find information on the basis of trusted relationships. MyMedwork also allows physicians to gain referrals, increase their visibility across the extended network, recruit patients for clinical trials, stay informed of the latest medical advancements, keep in touch with former colleagues and medical school classmates, and communicate with physicians around the world.
For specialists such as gastroenterologists, MyMedwork provides an efficient and powerful platform through which other specialists such as oncologists and radiologists can be reached. MyMedwork can also be used to link with family care physicians. Given the pace of change in today’s medical environment, social network technologies such as MyMedwork are poised to become a powerful tool in a physician’s overall information and communications platform.
The MyMedwork community grows via an invitation and acceptance process, in which physicians connect via email invitations to other physicians they know on a first-name basis. As these colleagues do the same, a large, extended network of trusted colleagues is illuminated, providing access to unique – and previously difficult to find - information and contacts. Once a physician has accepted an invitation to join MyMedwork, they have access to a variety of tools and resources.
Upon entering the site, users land on a personalized home page. This page provides them with customized news relating to the growth of their network, publication announcements, as well as customized alerts when various keywords have been added to the site.
The search function provides a powerful way to find and filter information vis a vis a user’s personal trust network. In other words – healthcare professionals may have potential access to useful information in their network – they simply may not be aware of where it exists. By relying on the extended strength of an online community of trusted colleagues, MyMedwork is able to deliver search results that are unique to each user. This list of trusted colleagues is ranked according to a special trust-rank algorithm that calculates who in the network is most likely to possess information on a given search term.
Another powerful feature of MyMedwork is the ability for physicians and researchers to identify and tag their articles at PubMed. By selecting their published articles, users make them available to the entire network. Note that the system also conducts a broader search of all PubMed articles – but gives priority to articles that are written by people who are “in network”. As users tag articles they have written, their profile is updated to include links to those particular articles. The PubMed article summary is then easily accessed from within the system.
Once a potentially useful profile and/or article has been identified within the network, a user can reach out to that particular person using the internal messaging system. This message center is a closed system, allowing physicians and researchers to enjoy a clutter free communications channel where they will only be contacted by other trusted colleagues. There are also privacy options that allow users to limit the extent to which various types of colleagues are able to contact them.
In addition to providing individuals with a powerful and personalized network platform, MyMedwork also has very robust group functionality. Medical school alumni associations, healthcare systems, medical associations, and specialty groups are just some of the group types that can take advantage of the MyMedwork platform to provide value to their members, communicate with one another, and make themselves more visible to the broader community.
Summary
Manhattan Research reports that more than 600,000 physicians are using search engines to find medical information. Are they searching about how to treat their day-to-day typical cases? Very unlikely. Chances are, they are researching an atypical case. However, if two physicians search – for example, on “esophageal cancer” at Google they each receive the same list – but have no easy context by which to evaluate the 6,980,000+ search results!
Social network software may be one way to help physicians overcome this “search result overload”, allowing them to move faster and more confidently outside their circle of trusted sources, especially when faced with an unusual condition. As we’ve noted, within MyMedwork, search priorities start with the individual physician’s network of trusted colleagues and work outward from there. In other words - each physician gets a totally unique list of search results based on who in their own extended network is likely to possess useful information. Because the medical community is so small, it turns out that physicians are usually quite closely linked to any given article or study, they are just not aware of the connection. By viewing the social network connection within their search results – they are then in a position to more accurately judge the quality of the information – either by checking with the in-between link (i.e. “Hi Dr. Jones, I notice you’re connected to Dr. Watson – what do you think of his study on phylloides tumors?”) – or by contacting the physician directly (i.e. “Hi Dr. Watson, I see you went to medical school with my colleague Dr. Jones, do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your study?).
The role of social networks in medical research and decision making is just beginning to be understood. In an era of rapid medical change, the need to develop richer and more varied sources of information and the value of far-reaching, online social trust networks will become increasingly apparent for physicians and researchers alike.
MyMedwork is owned and operated by S.M.A.R.T. Link Medical, Inc., which was founded in March of 2004 by three social psychologists. MyMedwork.com beta was launched in March of 2006, to physicians in the United States. In August of 2006, MyMedwork was made available for international users.
S.M.A.R.T. Link Medical recently became a Portfolio Company of BioEnterprise, a non-profit business accelerator chartered by the Cleveland Clinic, Case-Western Reserve University, University Hospitals, and Summa Health Care. MyMedwork is free to healthcare professionals around the world and is currently supported through capital investment.
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