Professional Social Bookmarking can provide real value

I got a note recently from Scott McQuigg, CEO of PeerClip, about their new social bookmarking tool. At first I thought “oh, no – not another ****bookmarking site.” But, I’m a sucker for any new startup in the Health 2.0 space so I took a look. It is one of the first bookmark sharing sites I’ve seen designed for specifically for physicians; I thought it was a great idea.

Today, all social bookmarking tools are peer generated content. Meaning the community selects bookmarks, ranks them, etc. But, the twist with PeerClip is that it’s designed for physicians to do the bookmarking. Basically, professional social bookmarking. I loved it.

PeerClip allows physicians to bookmark, organize and share medical information that they (as opposed to patients) feel is relevant and/or authoritative.

Using PeerClip, physicians can store their favorite online articles, blog postings, podcasts and videos on a personal home page for easy future reference for themselves or others to view. Physicians can also view bookmarks, comments and ratings on content their peers have bookmarked in PeerClip. This is pretty nice since they don’t have to wonder if the information has been vetted — it has, by their peers.

Nice idea, implemented well.

One nit – PeerClip designers need to simplify the home page a bit — it’s got lots of text on there and tries to convey too much, which means it takes a while to get the gist. The message to physicians should be pretty simple: “Share what you find on the Internet with your colleagues and in return they share their findings with you.”

Docs are busy and while they do read a lot visuals go a longer way. PeerClip should put up more screen shots to show the value of their tool instead of trying to describe it. A 30 second screencast may be even better.