Interesting Article About Clinician 1- October 2008

Posted 1 year, 12 months ago

WEB 2.0
Oct 09
Clinician 1: Sermo for NPs and PAs?
by shwen

As Sermo continues to grow and gain popularity among (verified) physicians, they have continued to expand their list of services to include things like CME, publications access (e.g. Nature and AMA), and even clinical trial recruitment. However, from my personal understanding of their business, they have no intention to stray away from their core competency; namely the physician-only market.

Hence, it’s with no surprise that others looking at Sermo’s success have tried to model this closed, vertical approach towards healthcare professionals (HCPs), such as Medscape’s Physician Connect.
And in similar fashion, Clinician 1 — a social networking community website — officially launched last week with a focus on Nurse Practiioners (NPs) and Physicians Assistants (PAs). Here’s an excerpt from the PharmaExec.com article:

Clinician 1 is a Facebook-style social networking site targeted to the 200,000 physician and nurse practitioners that prescribe drugs in all 50 states. It features personal information pages, medical education, and areas to facilitate two-way conversations between like-minded clinicians.

“We found that as we looked at ways to serve the informational and social needs of both these professions, a social network/community was needed,” said Dave Mittman, physician assistant and co-founder of Clinician 1… The site highlights different categories based on medical specialties and interests. Everything from retail clinicians, parenting issues, and military PAs are represented on the site. Also, much like you can pick friends in Facebook or Myspace, you can choose colleagues on Clinician 1. The site also includes about 50 hours of free continuing medical education, a repository of articles, and streaming news feeds.

This makes a lot of sense as market demand (read: pharma) extends to non-physician HCPs as well, so one can now potentially tap into this group of HCPs in a similar manner to Sermo, though I am not sure of their business model just yet (and I don’t think they do either). The article goes on to say…

Knowing that PAs and NAs are some of the top drug prescribers in the industry, pharma would do well to pay close attention for future opportunities. Clinician 1 does not currently have any pharma sponsors, but Mittman and Falk are looking at the possibility of sponsorship.
Obviously, social networks have been a sticking point with pharma companies.

“At this point, we are unsure as to what pharma wants to do and what the FDA wants to do with social community sites that have people possible speaking about unapproved indications and adverse reactions,” Mittman said. As of now, FDA has issued no regulations as to how pharma should proceed in regards to either establishing or taking part in a social network.

The other interesting thing about Clinician 1 is that it’s exclusive to NPs and PAs only — no physician allowed. Based on my interactions with physicians and other HCPs over the years, and particularly from my experience in a Continuing Medical Education (CME) agency, I can understand why the founders made it this way… I think it is definitely the right choice. Here’s what was said about this:

Most importantly, Mittman and his partner Spencer Falk believed that the site should not have physicians on it. To enroll in the site, potential members must include their state license number and sign a digital affidavit swearing to their identity as a PA or NA.

“Nurse practitioners and PAs have their own special needs regarding things like running a clinic in rural areas, barriers to practice, hospital privileges—many of the things that physicians take for granted and wouldn’t see any merit in reading,” Mittman said. “PAs and NAs tend to feel invisible within the healthcare system.”

It will be interesting to follow the growth of Clinician 1 and what business models they decide to adopt in order to sustain their growing network. Furthermore, I wonder if they could potentially be snapped up by a larger organization (Medscape?) in due time. Whatever happens, it’s great to see growth in this vertical social network area within medicine!