Scott Shreeve, MD On Sermo and Knowledge Prostitution

Scott Shreeve, MD one of my favorite Health 2.0 thinkers skeptically examines Sermo's business model of incentive pay for physician opinions and gives us non-physicians a glimpse (with screen shots) of how Sermo works in his post, "Change Agents: Knowledge Prostitution."

I've followed and posted about Sermo's development over the last year. Recently Sermo entered into a strategic affiliation with the AMA mashing up the old school health care industry with Health 2.0.

As these new health care business models evolve they raise all sorts of interesting legal questions for health care lawyers. For example, what impact will the recent outing of flea have on the reluctance of physicians to post recommendations/comments on sites like Sermo? Could specific content posts by physicians ultimately be used against them in future litigation to highlight prior inconsistent statements by the physician on a particular course of action or treatment? As Sermo continues to grow what impact will this online collaboration have on the definition of standard of care? How will Sermo respond when it receives a subpeona for records in a pending health care related class action or medical malpractice action? Just a few of the many questions that come to mind.

David Harlow at HealthBlawg looks at some of the same issues and explores others in his post on "the strange case of the arrogant physician, and related musings on the propriety physician blogging and other online behavior. "