Inside Innovation

Sermo

www.sermo.com

Launch: September, 2006
Members: Just under 34,000

Steven Brown, a lung disease specialist in Milwaukee, says that one of the most difficult parts of his job is the lack of interaction with other doctors. "You can be pretty lonely in a solo practice," he says. Last year he joined Sermo, an online community where authorized health-care professionals meet to debate diagnoses and discuss best practices in medicine. Doctors can post specific problems, such as an image of an unusual X-ray, and survey other members on the patient's most likely condition (all patients remain anonymous). It's also a platform to debate larger issues facing all doctors. For example, noting a decline in attendance at pharmaceutical company-sponsored events at which he sometimes lectured, Brown once posed the question, "What would it take to get you to attend a pharma-sponsored dinner?" (The most frequent response: an excellent restaurant). The site is free and hosts no advertising, but member comments and activities are sold as anonymous data to Sermo's paying third-party clients. So far, government researchers, private medical researchers, and—since late October—pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer (PFE) are buying in.