18 June 2007

AMA CHOOSES AN “OFFICIAL SOCIAL NETWORK”

The American Medical Association (AMA) and Sermo today announced a collaborative agreement to empower physicians by making their collective voice heard in a way never before possible. By teaming with Sermo, the AMA will be able to address important professional and public health issues in a multi-phase, multi-year alliance aimed at improving medical practice, physician advocacy, and patient care.


This will include: A “Discuss on Sermo” link in AMA print and online publications, including the AMA’s award-winning American Medical News, which reach more than 350,000 physicians. This new link will allow physicians nationwide to immediately discuss, survey, and corroborate opinions about the latest health care news and research.


Plenty of academic and public librarians have stressed the importance of being where their patrons are and having a presence in Facebook or MySpace. This announcement may indicate that a greater number of physician patrons are going to be using Sermo. Perhaps your medical library (or librarian) should, too.


When David Rothman posted this on his blog, one librarian responded, “I just found it odd that some medical bloggers were expressing fear of discussing the cases they see while Sermo seems to do the exact same thing only on a mass scale.”


This all seems rather strange to me [Judy]. Isn't the idea of Web 2.0 to allow people to use multiple, user-chosen tools to interact? AMA is controlling something that shouldn't be controlled.


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