Sermo (team carlos )

The community we chose to write about is sermo.com. The mission is that, “Sermo offers a novel way to target and engage the physicians you care about on-demand using social media. On Sermo you will instantly capture real-world expert insights into treatments, medications and products in support of a broad range of objectives” (sermo.com). When you go to the site it states that this is the largest online network, exclusive to physicians. This site is primarily meant for physicians to share ideas, discuss drugs, medical products and procedures. If I were a physician I would probably find this community to be very helpful, but since I am not there is almost no interest to me. However, by this being a physician only based community; it works because only professionals are creating information for the site.

The main way this community differs from using something such as Facebook, is the simple fact that it is membership only. Not everyone can just go look at the site and decide they want to become a part of the community because they feel like it. When you are on Facebook, anyone can look at your page and it makes it less personal and most times less informative as opposed to using a community. When I tried to sign up for an account on sermo.com just to get a look at the community, it even asked me what my social security number was just as part of the sign up process. Facebook is meant for more of an advertising and reminder standpoint as opposed to an informative standpoint.

Obviously, as stated before, the people that are visiting sermo.com are specialized physicians. While trying to look around the site the only things I could really come across, without becoming a member, was what they offered if you were a part of the community. Some examples would be, discuss by posting comments to share insights and learn from colleagues. Another was to solicit input and help peers on challenging patient cases. They are also paying people to participate in surveys and focus groups.

While looking around the main part of the site that was allowed, the only advertisements I saw where ones promoting the app that the community came up with so you can use your smart phone to stay up to date with the latest on the site. Of course this advertisement is very relevant to the website because it gives another way for the member to stay in touch with what is going on in the community. Other than that, there were no outside advertisements that I could view from the main pages.

I would say that Barnhill Sports Medicine Clinic would be a good company that could use Sermo. They are the clinic that helps out with WTAMU athletes so I have seen a lot of them around. They primarily focus on sports related injuries and I believe have two main physicians that work in this office. One way they could benefit from using this site would be to contact other physicians in their field and learn new ways to diagnose patients and figure out quicker ways of recovery.