Who Owns the Content? The Future of Medical Publishing.
Education is one of MedCrunch’s favorite topics. These are great times to talk about education. The internet and mobile devices have liberated knowledge and democratized its distribution. Up until now, medical knowledge was owned or distributed by several entities: the experts who produce it, the universities, the publishers and the various medical societies. Moreover, the pharmaceutical industry also has a major stake at educating physicians. In most countries, the majority of CME education is sponsored by pharma with educational sessions serving to enhance the pharma-physician relationship. However, this landscape is about to change and this is good news for the customer – we think. Let’s examine some reasons why we think that the game of learning is changing. Just look at the publishing industry. These large brick and mortar companies are facing the same risks as the music industry back in the 1990′s. Books are becoming digital, someone will eventually figure out how to share them with others. The natural impulse in our opinion would be to make digital books inexpensive and very easy to download and share on social media; the reduced product margin could be compensated by an increase in copies sold. However, publishers seem to head the opposite […]
