Just saw your response. Thanks.

Despite the proliferation of great open source tools such as Ruby on Rails, I would maintain that it would require at least $200,000 to build a decent social networking service that served the needs of docs in practice. I do not think that throwing a generic online community (phpfox, or even Ning, which I quite like) tool at doctors will do much to catch their attention. You would need to create the exclusivity that the community desired, and there is more to this than downloading phpBB.

My diapproval of advertising is based on the following: http://slate.com/id/2119712/

The more sublte point is that if your money is coming from Pharma, then you will not necessarily hold the interests of the community first.

The questions is see are as follows:

Where do the revenues will continue investing in the technology and hiring of staff? lets assume at a minimum you need a developer a site admin, support staff for admin and a doctor…and a dedicated server, SSL certificate, etc…that event before you get to the PGP side of stuff, whcih isn’t widely known and would also cost in terms of outlay.

Is there an example of a health site that uses PGP or GPG?
Who will do the admin, policing policies, negotiation with information suppliers?
How will it be marketed?
Who has the time to do this as well as practice medicine?

The reason I feel strongly about this is that I looked into doing it, but couldn’t see it happening for the problems above.

In every sector that I can think of, free-for-user ventures operate because they sell some kind of information (aggregate or non-aggregate) to 3rd parties, or they sell advertising. If a physician site did have pharma ads, would that be so wrong? Almost every doctor’s office I’ve been in has been some sort of real-time pharmacy ad, whether it’s the nurse’s clipboard, the informative anatomy posters on the wall with the drug name on the bottom, the little models on the table, to the samples given on the way out–Big Pharma is ubiquitous. Personally, I think that a pharma banner ad would be so lost on such a desensitized crowd.

Having said all that, money is not required for anything. If a group of IT-savvy, enterprising physicians want to start a site to do the above, nothing is stopping them. Start-up costs for building an online community are next-to-nothing, and it’s not like physicians (save residents and some fellows perhaps) are starving. Free open source software exists because of the passion and not-for-pay work of its volunteers. Recognition among peers is paramount. Physicians have many of these altruistic roots, they just often lose touch with them or don’t think to apply them to other endeavors.

I totally appreciate what you have to say. My point is, that inspiration is only part of the plan, the rest is perspiration and hard work. For your idealised (and exciting) model to be anything more than a concept, there are some questions that would have to be answered.

As physicians, we tend to be idealists. The truth is that social networks are risky projects, and as such, need to provide their backers with some kind of return on their investment, and making money is a necessary part of the equation. This is no bad thing, but it does raise some issues immediately regarding revenues.

I think that Sermo’s business model is actually pretty interesting, and certainly more preferable than plastering the site with Pharma ads. Unfortunately, most docs are tightwads, so a subscription based social network is less likely to get off the ground.

I just wanted to check that you were not having a reflex knee jerk reaction that money = Evil mindset.

Would be keen to hear your thoughts.

Cheers
GDoc

That said, I never proposed funding of any kind nor did I ever intend to. My idealized model is just that–an ideal (to me, anyway). The point of the post was to lay out the issues, technologies, and possibilities surrounding secure communications and how they can be applied to a social network infrastructure. The intended audience is not venture capitalists but health care professionals; I wanted to inspire possibilities in people’s minds, not give a marketing proposal.

In other words (albeit said prematurely), “Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor not a businessman!” Thanks for stopping by.

You make some good points on the security front.

Please state how you would choose to fund your idealised social network, and give a rough estimate as to how much your security outlay stated here would cost.

I suspect the cost it would be prohibitive, and how would you sustain it revenue wise?

No revenue => no site.