CONNECTING ONLINE
Driving Collaboration Through Virtual Communities
By Jared Hullett,
Vigilant Medical
Through clouds of obscenities, scams, and
skepticism a wholesome truth about the
Internet remains. Our ability as a culture to
form and function in communities has never
been stronger than it is online.
From Facebook to forums, our constant connection to technology allows us—even obliges us—to remain connected to each other.
Like-minded people now gather in virtual
environments to teach and ultimately solve
the pressing problems of their specific cohort. Diffusing a single person’s expertise
and knowledge across a community as a collective has never been simpler to accomplish.
Yet physici ans and medical professionals
wait for archaic brick-and-mortar conferences to see their community thriving and
communicating at one-tenth of the vivacity
of your average online forum.
But these discuss trivial matters; could such
a format provide truly useful insights for
highly educated and specialized cardiologists? To delineate this question even further, we can ask: do online forums provide a
platform for serious collaboration and communication?
Although healthcare has been slower to
catch on, much of the business world has
fully embraced online communities. Online
communities exist for everything from
search engine optimization—a form of online
marketing—to basic management principles.
Where all of these iterations are great ways
to diffuse expertise across many people,
there is a different implementation of webbased communities that could impact
healthcare and specifically cardiology departments drastically.
These are moderated, safe, and professional
Imagine a HIPAA secure online platform
corners of the web where those looking to
where interventionalists and surgeons can
learn or simply talk with
post real cases to
like-minded people can
other specialists at a
This proactive and
gather to communicate.
nearby hospital. Imcost effective apOn a personal note, I’ve
agine a physician
learned more from parposting a particularly
proach would put
ticipating in these comtroublesome case—
munities than I did in all these institutions out in
complete with paof my years of formal
tient history and inbusiness education. It is front of the quality and ap- formation—and reeasy to see how these
ceiving an opinion in
propriateness issues most
professional online foa matter of minutes.
rums could translate into cardiac programs are beginNow, imagine a dehealthcare.
ning to dread.
partment at one facilCommunities like these
ity being able to post
could improve almost all aspects of
a sample of studies to a partner institution.
healthcare. I can imagine basic web-forums
That partner institution could then do an
for lab techs to share tips and help those
exploratory review for appropriateness and
who are just starting out learn and grow. Or
quality while simultaneously posting studies
perhaps a more advanced version for physito the first institution for review as well.
cians where they can post full patient imagThis proactive and cost effective approach
ing studies—stripped of personal patient
would put these institutions out in front of
information of course—and discuss the case
the quality and appropriateness issues most
with colleagues from around the world.
12
“