It seems like a great concept (to me anyway). Grow a community of like-minded Healthcare IT geeks that want to participate in an on-line Q&A site which rewards contribution and facilitates constructive dialog. As of today, it appears unlikely this will happen anytime soon.
Even after being endorsed on HISTalk News 6/25/10 less than 900 people have visited the site.
The attraction that programmers have for Stack Overflow just doesn't translate for this group of professionals. I suppose it's the nature of the business.
- Programming, like Food and Cooking, have a much larger audience. Since only a small percentage of the interested population will actively participate or become community leaders, the numbers game is critical.
- Even though Healthcare IT seems like a broad topic, the number of non-subjective questions that could be asked is probably fairly limited. The .NET Framework and bread recipes have tons of facts.
- Maybe HIT experts are a shy bunch? The activity level also seems surprising low on Chris Paton's Health Informatics Forum site which has over 4000 members.
Anyway, it's really too bad there isn't a way for a site like this to gain traction. It would be a valuable HIT resource if it could get off the ground.
Tags: area51.stackexchange.com, Health Informatics Forum, HIT Community, stack exchange, stack overflow
I’m launching this service on http://www.HITSphere.com (I have all the software and code written). Drop me an email and we can chat on the phone about how to kick it off and make it very useful.