Following up on a survey conducted last year, our former editor Ivor Kovic and his colleague Ileana Lulic, both emergency physicians in Croatia, have initiated an academic project to study the medical blogosphere in all its glory.
The new Health Blogs Observatory has three basic goals:
To conduct annual surveys of health bloggers, which would be designed, analyzed and openly published by the bloggers themselves. To create the most comprehensive web directory of health blogs. To nurture new ideas and facilitate future research collaborations between health bloggers.
And here’s the role the Observatory is hoping to play, in the creators’ own words:
Health Blogs Observatory is conceived as an online community of health bloggers, a place of unity, an open online research lab where we can work together. It was created by the health bloggers and for the health bloggers. This is its major strength, because working together we can achieve much greater accomplishments than we could ever do individually. We can create the best web directory of health blogs and conduct research of highest quality. There is no one who understands health blogging better then us, health bloggers.
Our goals are important, because health blogs are important. They have the power to influence medical and health policy and such research could help us to better utilize them for the enhancement of teaching and learning productivity, advancements in scientific research, and support for continuing medical and patient education.
Link: Health Blogs Observatory
