Neo-tribes: The power and potential of online communities in health care

The potential role played by online communities in providing health care services are discussed. Online communities have emerged as the supplement to Physician Office Visit (POV) to help satisfy patient needs. Sponsorship and participation in such online communities by physicians, health care organization, and pharmaceutical companies have the potential of enriching the physician-patient relationship and accruing benefits to other stakeholders with large positive impacts on the nation's health care system. An added benefit is the exchange of medical information between the persons with minimum intrusiveness, enhancing the authenticity of the information gathered. The participation in the online communities satisfies many of the multidimensional needs of patients and their caregivers, the affective, spiritual, cognitive, in ways that the traditional health care infrastructure fails to accomplish.