Communities of practice: Telemedicine and online medical communities

E-health and telemedicine have had limited success across the European Union (EU), but using online collaborative technologies to support a community of practice may enable a sustainable healthcare community. In this paper we introduce a virtual medical community that enables geographically-dispersed medical experts to collaborate and share their knowledge in order to improve health care provision. This research confirms that media richness is not required for sustainable communities of practice, that there is greater effectiveness in knowledge sharing when virtual medical communities develop into communities of practice, and that communities of practice are sustainable when shared knowledge enhances medical practice.