How the crowd can change collaborative work in patient care

The medical paradigm is leaving the traditional doctor-patient relationship, i.e., the physician-centred model and evolving towards a new de-centralized model where patients are given more responsibility for their health. This article seeks to understand what is changing in this relationship and what role the Web and the interconnected crowds of people play in this state of affairs. Our work discusses the evolution of the Web, how it is changing Medicine and the way patients are reaching to health information, and presents a new approach for Medicine 3.0 and its prospective scenarios. This transition has been changing the interaction between doctors and patients. Patients have become more social and responsible for their own health, adopting new communication channels and interacting with other patients and stakeholders distributed all over the world. In this new health care context, the premise whereby many people are eager to contribute by sharing health information, anytime and anywhere, should be included in the design of new technologies to support collaborative work in healthcare. To assist in this, our paper discusses how the new crowdware systems is supporting a multitude of Web-based collaborators interested in Medical Care, showing some examples of its application, taking into account all the stakeholders: doctors, patients, laboratories, hospitals, and apomediators.