Abstract

The "Second Opinion Medical Network" is a consultation referral web and medical office system recruiting a wide panel of real-time available specialists, to whom any patient affected by any disease or syndrome and not satisfied with the diagnosis or therapy can apply for an individual clinical audit. Due to the physician-patient communication gap, most of the patients usually wander around the medical websites looking for proper answers to their health problems. However, this search often becomes compulsive and obsessive and frequently ambiguous and frustrating. Palmieri, et al. defines this borderline or even pathological behavior as the "Web Babel Syndrome"- psychological imbalance affecting young and elderly patients, often with multiple synchronous diseases receiving by their care givers heterogeneous and misleading informations or advices, as well as, confused, contradictory statements and prescriptions. To deal with this problem, the "Second Opinion Medical Network" aims to be a useful "problem-solving" support revisiting each conflictual diagnostic and therapeutic step and properly re-addressing tailored treatments and prognoses, preventing unnecessary investigations and unhelpful and expensive medical and surgical interventions. The aim of this editorial is to describe the role and benefits of such a medical network in our web connected health care system.

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