Most people manage their contacts with the aid of a personal digital assistant (PDA), cell phone or computer. Now a new generation of online tools are helping professionals get even better connected.
Free networking platforms are proliferating on the Internet. Just as young people use websites such as MySpace to find friends and share photos and music, business people use online networks such as LinkedIn and Ryze to make new contacts and discover new opportunities.
Physicians and life-sciences researchers can now do the same through the online biomedical community PrometeoNetwork (http://www.PrometeoNetwork.com) via a platform provided by the company Within3 (http://www.Within3.com). Within3 provides the ability to find collaborators, refer patients and find new professional opportunities, in addition to making it easier to manage existing personal contacts.
PrometeoNetwork hosts several subgroups, including, for example, 'stem-cell researchers', 'Italian scientists' or 'oncologists'. Members are invited to join such groups by colleagues. PrometeoNetwork and Within3 organize promotions, social gatherings and participation at conferences. PrometeoNetwork is also working to raise funds for fellowships and to help members find opportunities to work and study abroad.
Members build a profile of their background and interests, and can associate their publications and clinical trials with their profile using a tool that interacts directly with the relevant databases. The community grows as members invite their peers to join (administrators routinely evaluate new requests for membership). Using the search engine, members can find and filter information that exists in the network and in other databases, discover new colleagues, stay current on the work of their peers, communicate with other physicians and scientists, and build their personal networks. Through privacy settings, members can control who has access to their information.
Face-to-face contact at conferences will always be important to scientists. But the new technologies are ways to augment traditional networking. The chances of finding a key collaborator can be dramatically improved — without ever leaving the lab bench.