The goal of our “Contemporary Topics in Health Care” articles is to take a complex and often little-understood concept and explain it to physical therapists (PTs). Although PTs are not the traditional “consumer,” they may be viewed as such when novel ideas that they might adopt are presented to them. Further, while physical therapists are health care providers, they also are consumers—of products, of information, and of the benefits of collaboration with other health care providers. The goal of the series is to show the topic’s 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 use 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. The article also suggests ways that crowdsourcing may be used in health care in the future.
