Patient care gets online lift
It's hard to say, but the ability for doctors to quickly and discretely share important medical information about patient care with their colleagues through a password-protected online service just got an important boost with the announcement this week of an alliance formed between a leading Web-based, physicians-only community in the U.S. and its counterpart in Germany.
Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Physicians Online (POL), an independent, privately-held community of 150,000 U.S. medical doctors, has announced plans to form a cross-border alliance with Health Online Service multimedica (HOS), an online community of 15,000 German physicians.
HOS multimedica is jointly owned by Bertelsmann AG, Springer Verlag and Burda Group, three well-known German publishing houses.
At a trans-Atlantic news conference held in New York and Berlin, representatives for the two online services indicated their hopes to significantly advance the sharing of critical information on a global basis among time-pressed medical professionals.
Hands across the water
"This is an effort to create value to the community by expanding the knowledge base internationally," said David Richards, president and CEO of Physicians Online.
He added that POL was impressed by HOS's community-building skills and the fact that it has strived to create a doctors-only community like POL.
POL subscribers must authenticate their credentials via a Drug Enforcement Agency number or medical education number. Richards explained that the cross-border POL service would not utilize translation software, and that the expectation was that many German doctors would be fluent in English.
In addition, he did not express any concern about the upcoming implementation of the European Union's data directive, to go into effect in October of this year.
The ruling permits export of consumers' personal data only when that information is going to countries whose data protection laws are deemed "adequate," and will impose other requirements on U.S. companies engaged in the cross-border exchange of online data.
Instant communications is key
According to Richards, the new alliance means that subscribers to each service will have access to the others' unique medical content and POL's bulletin boards and chat areas where doctors can discuss anything from clinical trials among 150 medical specialties to their most recent stock-market investments.
POL is a free and advertiser-supported online community of authenticated physicians that features secure and encrypted online access to medical news, textbooks and training. According to POL, the most active areas on the service are the discussion areas, MEDLINE searches and e-mail.
HOS multimedica is a subscriber-based service that charges doctors approximately $80 annually for access to medical information provided by 20 specialty publishers. It does not currently feature bulletin boards or chat areas but does have a committee of medical experts who can supply answers to medical questions.
Complications ahead?
According to analyst Kate Delhagen with Forrester Research Inc., new global, virtual communities such as POL may face complications in the months ahead with the implementation of the European Union's data directive (EUDA), which goes into effect on Oct. 25.
Indeed, Delhagen cautioned that the new ruling could cause problems down the road for any U.S. online communities that access data from European consumers. "If they are not worried about it now, they should be," Delhagen said.