Can We Crowdsource Medicine?
Can we crowdsource medicine? It’s one of those topics where you either already have an opinion or wonder what crowdsourcing actually is.
I recently read a story about a mother’s visit to the emergency room with her son. Normally a private experience, this became public via the mother’s Facebook account. Her network, which included physicians, made a diagnosis that doctors might have missed. She was sacrificing some privacy, but that delivered a big return in reaching the correct diagnosis quickly.
This is crowdsourcing in its basic form. According to Wikipedia, crowdsourcing is a process that involves outsourcing tasks to a distributed group of people. I guess it’s one of those benefits that we get from the emergence of technology that underpins the process, with social media, user-generated content and sharing toolsets. In truth, we have always been able to ‘crowdsource’, but the practical ability to do it hasn’t existed.
But it’s more than just the technology. In parallel to the technology is a fundamental change in cultural attitude and willingness to embrace sharing and contributing. Today, we repeatedly see an increased willingness to contribute, share, rate and review online. For many of us, it’s becoming a core approach to the way we operate, certainly in our personal lives. But can it really translate to the way medical professionals interact and engage?
Yes, it can. Who would have thought 10 years ago that physicians would be using digital resources pre-, post- and even during consultations? It simply would not have been conceivable.
Research is predicting that the next (or is it current?) wave of social media growth will be in the academic and professional fields, certainly in advanced countries. Social media for consumers is starting to reach a plateau. You may see new channel elements arriving – recently Pinterest joined the pack and became the latest fastest-growing community – however, some say that the major initial growth phase is over.
Meanwhile, the predicted growth in social media use by physicians is already manifesting itself with the use of healthcare professional (HCP) communities such as doc2doc from the BMJ and Sermo in the US. Here, HCPs exchange opinion, fuelled by mobile technology and the ‘always on’ mentality. The new breed of junior doctors are embracing these channels strongly, as well as more niche services such as those where research can be shared and even peered-reviewed (for example, the online tool ResearchGate).
The growth of crowdsourcing is inevitable. My prediction is that it will mature and become more sophisticated, perhaps even go behind closed doors in mainstream HCP communities. It’s going to be an interesting one to watch. Early adopters are there already but it needs to reach its tipping point – the point at which it will start to deliver real value for medicine.
About Dave:
Dave is a Senior Consultant at Complete Digital and has over 10 years’ healthcare experience within both eMarketing and the digital channel, working with several large pharmaceutical companies to help them realize the benefits of a multi-channel communications strategy. An early advocate of social media, he has led several successful uses of the channel for infection, anesthesia and OTC products. Dave has an MBA, a Post Graduate Diploma in Marketing and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.