Knowledge Creation in Virtual Communities of Patients: The Role of Quality Assurance

Virtual communities of patients provide health-related information and mutual support for their members. This paper presents a member centric knowledge creation process within virtual communities of patients. Our objective is to capture the importance of quality assurance of medical information available within virtual communities of patients. Furthermore, the role of the members as the main player in the quality assurance process is discussed and a knowledge creation process that involves the community and the operator is presented. This knowledge creation process fits the needs of these communities in terms of interaction, medical content and quality assurance aspects done by the members and the operator. The paper presents a full design cycle including an empirical study on the needs of virtual communities of patients, the design of a new e-service that fits these needs and the implementation of the knowledge creation process.