Researchers study health bloggers, form online community

Last fall, a trio of researchers published a paper examining that peculiar class of people who may be loosely described as health bloggers.The results, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, found that “Medical blogs are frequently picked up by mainstream media; thus, blogs are an important vehicle to influence medical and health policy.”

Two of the researchers also formed the Health Blogs Observatory, which they call an online community, and published a directory. We reached out to Ivor Kovic, an emergency physician, about the survey and their hopes for their observatory.