Expected health benefits of e-Therapeutics Highlights according to pharmacists and physicians

The purpose of this research brief is to describe the expected health benefits of e-Therapeutics Highlights,* as evaluated by Canadian pharmacists and family physicians. The Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA), the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) and the Information Technology Primary Care Research Group (McGill University) collaborated to create an innovative continuing education program, called e-Therapeutics Highlights. Highlights are key treatment recommendations from e-Therapeutics+.** CPhA produces and maintains e-Therapeutics+, a web portal comprising clinical topic summaries that are authored and peer reviewed by subject matter experts (www.e-therapeutics.ca). Once a week, CPhA and CFPC members receive an e-Therapeutics Highlight delivered by e-mail, which they have the option of evaluating by means of a reflective learning activity based on the Information Assessment Method (IAM).1 For each rated Highlight, pharmacists receive continuing education units, and family physicians receive Mainpro credits. We present the aggregated results of IAM ratings as a way of summarizing the wisdom of the crowd of Highlight raters. Crowdsourcing is a force multiplier, defined as the release of online material to a crowd of users who may be interested in contributing ideas or performing a task such as rating a Highlight (voting) and submitting their work to a platform or an organization such as the CPhA, for the profit of the entire community.2,3 Large groups can be collectively wise in identifying relevant information.4 This principle of “crowdsourcing” has been applied to the development of innovative learning network approaches such as those seen in Wikipedia and various voting systems.5,6 Crowdsourcing allows the traditional “ask-the-user” approach to reach a wider audience.7,8

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