Online professional networks for physicians: risk management.

Background: The rapidly developing array of online physician-only communities represents a potential extraordinary advance in the availability of educational and informational resources to physicians. These online communities provide physicians with a new range of controls over the information they process, but use of this social media technology carries some risk.

Questions/purposes: The purpose of this review was to help physicians manage the risks of online professional networking and discuss the potential benefits that may come with such networks.