Surgeon-turned serial entrepreneur founded Sermo in 2005. An affinity social network for doctors. The idea is crowd sourcing of medical and clinical expertise; what once happened in doctors' lounges, now happens on the web at scale. Especially useful to docs practicing in areas that lack specialists or the support systems of elite training hospitals. Quality filter: you must be a licensed MD to register. But controversial for its other "knowledge-sharing": To make money Sermo sells access to third parties, like investors, who could tap the network to, say, conduct a blind poll of whether docs will prescribe a new drug from Pfizer. But doctors don't know who is asking, and investors don't know who has answered. That's a leap forward from physicians collecting honorariums to deliver "research papers" at pharma events. And we like innovations that leverage the expertise of 90,000 docs.

On Sermo's break with the AMA:

"The sad fact is that the AMA membership has now shrunk to the point where the organization should no longer claim that it represents physicians in this country...It’s time to turn to entities like Sermo where physicians are establishing a new voice to collectively discuss the future of our profession. There can be no healthcare reforms that have any chance of succeeding without buy-in from physicians.  As a country, we cannot risk another failed reform effort."