Digital contents consumption in Spain

The Observatorio Nacional de las Telecomunicaciones y de la Sociedad de la Información belongs to the public body red.es and its main aim is to analize the information society in Spain.

Recently, the Observatory has published a white paper on Digital Contents (Libro Blanco de los Contenidos Digitales). There is a full chapter dedicated to the Network Society and summarise the use of tools such as wikis, blogs, repositories, etc...

Two thirds of Spaniards (64%) consume digital contents. Music and films are the king contents (more than 70%). Interestingly podcasts are consumed by only 0,8% of digital users.

Health information is used by 44%, a 2-bagger regarding 2004.

Medting

Medting is an internet social community tailored for clinicians to share their clinical cases and browse a disease atlas. Equipped with medical image software and videos, doctors may ask for second opinions, share cases or stock private ones for self-learning. All visual information may be shared embedded too. This is just an example:


Integration with PubMed for citation searching and a tagging system based on SNOMED CT allow users to collaborate and discover sound information.
It is surprising that such a venture is supported by a business model completely free for end-users (doctors), even if they are premium users. Advertisement in weekly email reports and a licensing system for organizations are the only two revenue streams.

Third healthcare revolution

Sir Muir Gray foreword Web 2.0 in the Health Sector, a industry review with UK perspective (by Lindsey Birnsteel from E-Health Insider). Comparing industrial revolutions (we are in the 3rd one according to Manuel Castells) and healthcare revolutions (we are too in our third according to Sir Muir Gray), there are some unsolved problems that e-health (symbol of the new revolution) might contribute to address:
• errors;
• poor quality care delivery;
• poor experience of patients;
• waste;
• unknowing variations in policy and practice;
• failure to introduce high value interventions;
• uncritical adoption of low value interventions;
and
• failure to recognize uncertainty and ignorance.

An executive summary of Birnsteel report is accessible here, though the full report requires order.

doc2doc: connecting doctors worldwide

The British Medical Journal Group has recently launched a new initiative on the web 2.0 wave. doc2doc is an online community addressed to doctors worldwide although it is open to other health professionals. Forums and blogs are the first hosted features.
Scientific journals have increasingly adopted 2.0 gadgets into their sites such as RSS feeds, social bookmarkers and tags. Scientists, researchers and practitioners, as the main producers and consumers of scientific publications, may take advantage of 2.0-like communities to:
- Connect with peers
- Share knowledge and discovery
- Organise professional and research projects