Sermo

Sermo is an online community for physicians founded in 2006 by Daniel Palestrant. Open to only M.D.s and D.O.s in the United Sates, Sermo is a place for physicians to post observations and questions about clinical issues and hear other doctors' opinions.

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About

Sermo was originally imagined as an adverse effect reporting system. Reporting systems failed during Merck's 2004 Vioxx (Rofecoxib) recall, which removed Vioxx, a Cox-2 inhibitor, from the market due to an increased risk of myocardial infarction (heart attack). Daniel Palestrant believed that an online forum could collect and filter these types of observations more effectively than existing systems.^[1] The site has since grown into a discussion board covering a variety of clinical topics.

Physicians can register after verifying their status as licensed, practicing physicians and receive a pseudonym of their choice. This pseudonym and the doctor’s specialty are the only pieces of information that other doctors will be able to see automatically, making Sermo a credentialed, but anonymous community. Doctors post observations and comments, create and respond to polls, and browse medical articles within the site. They can also create profiles, revealing more information about themselves. This ability, and the closed nature of the site, has led some sources to refer to Sermo as a “MySpace for Physicians.”^[2]

The comparison isn’t quite apt, since Sermo is more of a vertical community (a type of virtual community) than a traditional social network service. Doctors use the site mainly to exchange professional opinions and insights in an anonymous environment, not connect to other people they know and share personal information.^[3]

Clients

Unlike most social networks, Sermo does not make money by advertising to its users^[4]. Instead, Sermo makes money by selling access to physicians’ anonymized comments and polling data to financial institutions, health care organizations, and governmental bodies.^[5] Clients have the ability to read doctor’s comments and create a limited number of postings (identified as Client Postings) to which doctors respond. Clients have different reasons for seeking access.

Financial institutions may want to trade on the wisdom of crowds that polling a number of doctors can create, trusting that this group of specially trained individuals will be better at predicting events like FDA approval better than the market. At least one Sermo client has profited from this information arbitrage.^[6] Health care companies and organizations such as the AMA may focus on discovering doctors’ usage patterns and may value direct access to physicians’ opinions and attitudes about health care today.^[7]

Partnership with the AMA

In May of 2007, Sermo announced a partnership with the American Medical Association.^[8] The partnership will give doctors the ability to access AMA publications such as JAMA. In return, the AMA received limited access to read content on Sermo and create postings to which doctors can respond directly.

Criticisms of Sermo

Some pharmaceutical companies and PhRMA (an industry-funded lobbying group) have voiced concerns that incomplete and anecdotal reports will provide inaccurate information. They cite an early post on the site which raised concerns about Byetta (Exenatide) that had not been reported in peer-reviewed literature. Sermo has responded by pointing out that the site is user-moderated, and that this post received (and most inaccurate posts would receive) no support.^[9]

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