Web-Based Communities for Lifelong Medical Learning

Abstract

The exponential growth of medical information, the increased demands for expertise and the limited time that people have to spend for self-improvement create the need for delivering the appropriate knowledge to the appropriate people in the minimum of time. Traditional learning and training approaches are inadequate to fulfil the needs of doctors and medical practitioners, who need always to get informed on new technologies, devices and products and seek for solution in specific problems. Open educational programs and e-learning solutions usually fail to adapt to the emerging needs. The only viable solution seems to be education on demand and communities offer good ground for this. This work examines web-based medical communities as means for delivering education on demand whilst in the same time allowing participants to contribute their expertise. Successful community paradigms are reviewed and the structure of a community for medical learning is detailed. The community tools increase the synergy among industry, practitioners and scientists and allow information sharing, “on the spot” advices and collaborative knowledge building. In the same time, patients receive valuable consults and industry disseminates information on new products and devices and promotes professional excellence. This work summarizes the benefits from the use of communities in deploying medical education to professionals and students, discusses best practices and pitfalls that should be avoided and gives a sketch of the community structure and tools to be employed.