The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) is the latest to jump into Health 2.0 with last week's launch of its own social networking site for Canadian physicians called Asklepios.    Asklepios joins a growing list of professional networking sites for health care practitioners, including sermo.com, within3.com, and ozmosis.com, just to name a few. 

Named for the Greek god of medicine and healing, the site is exclusive to Canadian physicians, residents and medical students and is bilingual (English and French).  Its features currently include personalized profile pages, access to groups and discussions, messaging, real-time chats, and events. 

The CMA will be doing a presentation on Asklepios at the Medicine 2.0 conference in Toronto on September 4.

It remains to be seen how Canadian physicians will receive Asklepios, as I suspect some of them may already be part of other health care professional networking sites.  As of today, there are only 114 members and 33 comments on Asklepios.  According to its website, the CMA has 67,000 members across the country.

On a related note, the CMA also launched its own health portal back in April called mydoctor.ca, which allows physicians to register their patients with online tools such as asthma tracker, blood pressure tool, weight tracker and personal health record. In addition, the portal provides secure messaging between patients and doctors.  Interestingly, my own family doctor is on mydoctor.ca; however, I am not aware that she’s used any of the available features and, in fact, her profile page hasn’t been updated with her new hours.   

Web 2.0 is the buzzword on everyone’s minds, but how is it changing the game for health care?

The Internet is rapidly evolving from an environment where static pages exist for people to search and read information (a.k.a. Web 1.0) to one where users from all walks of life can create and share content online. 

Patients now have the potential to go beyond just researching health facts on the web to actively sharing their experiences with each other – not only for emotional support but also to benefit from collective intelligence and gain clinical knowledge from each other.  They increasingly have the ability to take greater control and play a larger role in the management of their own health.

Not surprisingly, a recent survey showed that patients are starting to consult Internet-based resources, including social media, more than they consult their physicians.

59% resort to Internet-based resources (including Web sites, search engines, online advertisements, blogs, forums, and social networks) for health- and wellness-related information (versus 55%  who ask their physician)

Source: iCrossing

Physicians themselves are starting to utilize Web 2.0 as well.  Sermo.com is an example of a social networking site exclusively for doctors which enables members to come together to share their knowledge in order to “accelerating the emergence of trends and new insights on medications, devices and treatments.”   

Here is a small sample of the many health-related Web 2.0 resources out there:

It is clear that Web 2.0’s popularity will start to change the way in which patients, physicians and researchers collaborate and learn about illnesses and therapies, and manage patient health. 

Web 2.0 holds great potential for both health care professionals and patients alike, but it remains to be seen how issues surrounding privacy and security, which are especially heightened in the health care space, will be overcome.

Read my full article on Health 2.0.