Medscape Physician Connect

I’ve been looking into Medscape Physician Connect, a site that has rapidly grown into the largest social network of physicians. This page offers a good summary of available features: http://www.medscape.com/connect

Description: Medscape Physician Connect is a community of physicians that facilities the exchange of ideas on both clinical and non-clinical topics. Through a rating system and open discussion, physicians can get feedback from other physicians on their research and fresh perspectives on cases.

Use Case: Physicians are the primary actor. Their goal is to get information on a particular clinical topic. They use the site by creating an account and having their medical credentials verified. Then the physician can create posts to get feedback from other users, watch threads on topics they are interested in, and share their insights on the topics of other physicians.

Information Sharing Standards: Standards are crucial for the success of Medscape Physician Connect. Those posting on this site are not anonymous like the typical web forum. All physicians have had their identity and credentials verified by Medscape. This crucial standard addresses the adverse selection problem inherent with other wiki-based information sharing websites where anonymous users often post false information.