The goal of our “Contemporary Topics in Health Care” articles is to take an activity, concept, trend, or movement—often one that is relatively little known within health care—and show its relevance and importance to health care in general and to physical therapy in particular. In this case, the subject was crowdsourcing—harnessing the power of “the crowd” to arrive at a solution. Crowdsourcing currently is in vogue in technology circles but actually has a long and interesting history. The article briefly traces the history of crowdsourcing over the centuries before delving into some contemporary applications. The article identifies a number of health care-specific applications of crowdsourcing, including some that have been used in physical therapy. It also suggests ways that crowdsourcing may be used in health care in the future.
