Social Impacts of Mobile Virtual Communities on Healthcare

Abstract

Mobile technologies, such as PDAs, pocket PCs and cell phones, are transforming interpersonal communications, making them independent from a fixed location and then “situated nowhere”. The widespread diffusion of mobile technologies combined with the popularity of virtual communities is giving rise to the development of mobile virtual community. Mobile virtual community has the great potential to serve information needs. A relevant application’s domain for mobile virtual communities is healthcare, where the need for information is deeply felt and has a longterm nature. Mobile virtual healthcare communities encourage information exchange between patients, between physicians, and between patients and physicians. The exchange of information can be used for detecting patients and physicians that have common objectives in order to establish interaction among them.