Engagement in online medical communities of practice in healthcare: Analysis of messages and social networks

Abstract

We report on preliminary analysis on user engagement in two online medical communities of practice. Despite the communities being independent of each other, and dealing with different domains (field epidemiology and therapeutic prescribing for optometrists), there are some clear similarities in the networks of users, and in patterns of replies to user postings. We also draw some initial conclusions to help maintain user engagement in these and similar sites, and we suggest some future lines of research. © 2012 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.