Disintermediation in Medical Information
By Ian
I tend to like pharmaceutical advertising because I have a preference for more information rather than less (even if it is filtered through the lens of the seller). No, it's not an unadulterated good in all situations, but if I'm uncertain about the conditions under which I'm participating, I'll choose to believe that more information could be a help, especially in relation to medicine. All of which makes me appreciate the new patientINFORM service.
Under the patientINFORM web-based pilot project, when patients, their caregivers, or others visit the voluntary health organization websites with general questions and to read news stories and other web content created by the organizations to help interpret the latest research, they will also have the option of being connected directly to the source through links to free full text of the research articles on the journal websites. Healthcare consumers will be able to access selected journal articles as soon as they are published.
This comes via Slashdot, which has a host of interesting links to a number of places bringing more information to the masses.