Years ago, starting our adventure in the world of Medicine, knowledge was linked to the textbooks, publications, conferences, lectures, seminars that kept us up to date on new diagnostic and therapeutic options.
The disclosure was slowly traveling between the tracks of the printed paper. The need to update went beyond the technical and communicative possibilities in those years. The Congress was the meeting point for discussion and presentation of new methodologies, techniques and knowledge.
I am not referring to a century ago, but what has happened in the last 30 years is incredible.
The Internet has changed the History of Medicine, has changed the mode of communication, speeding up and simplifying interpersonal contacts. The same evolution of communication through the Internet has encouraged the creation of specific databases like PubMed that makes available online the studies published by Medline, and anything produced by the scientific literature to date.
From spectators we became actors. Forums at first, then blogs, and recently social networks have made us participants in the global community. The big step forward is the discussion.

The communication was unidirectional, but now it becomes bi-directional.
We have to give credit to Facebook in 2004 for the merit of creating a network of people, geographically distant, with common interests. The social network is a powerful tool that provides people, in real-time, with a complete, easy-to-use communication platform.
Coming back to the area of Medicine, it seems inappropriate to use Facebook for the disclosure of strictly medical news, because of the wide social basis that characterizes the structure of this social network.
Hence, there is the need to apply all the criteria of global communication in social networks specific to certain categories and professions. Doctors will be interested in talking to other colleagues in a private and homogeneous space to share their knowledge and discuss clinical cases, protocols, news, and diagnostic and therapeutic techniques.

In 2011 Social4Med was founded, the global Medical Network whose mission is to bring together in a comprehensive, protected, certified network, all professionals of the Health Care industry: physicians, healthcare companies, scientific societies, hospital facilities and universities.
The Paediatric Surgery Online Society was among the first to join this project, and we must recognize the merit of having realized the importance of participation in the Medical Network with great advantage for the company in the relationships with members on communicability sharing real-time information.

The future of our medical profession is the sharing of experiences, information, knowledge, and permanent communication with colleagues around the world to better cure afflictions.

We could call it the motto of the professional in the era of the Medical Network: share and cure.

Salvatore Tribastone MD – @salvotribastone

• Editorial published for the Paediatric Surgery Online Society, PSONS Journal, issue 1, Dec 2014.