The BMJ just ran a story titled How Web 2.0 is Changing Medicine. Following some head scratching over a definition and a brief run through the various Web 2.0 tools the authors conclude that “Web 2.0 may be one of the most influential technologies in the history of publishing”

The results of a study posted on Pub Med include this stat: 53% of nursing schools and 45% of medical schools use Web 2.0 tools in their curricula.

It’s all too easy to swallow this sort of stuff whole; thankfully wiser heads have taken the time to comment. AnneMarie Cunningham writing on her Wishful Thinking in Medical Education blog points out the methods used mean that the PubMed paper tells us nothing about the use of web 2.0 tools in medical and nursing schools in the US

Dr Colin Mitchell concurs: “apart from generating headlines, what use is this kind of research anyway? So 45% of medical/nursing schools use web2 tools. Big woop. Who uses them? What for? How? How often? And most importantly, why? If a web2 tool can deliver a better educational outcome (or an equivalent one more cheaply / easily / quickly) than a conventional teaching method, that’s a good thing. But just using web2 education tools isn’t important – it’s what you do with them that counts.”