Mission and Goals


Main Goals

  1. To conduct annual surveys of health bloggers, which would be designed, analyzed and openly published by the bloggers themselves.
  2. To create the most comprehensive web directory of health blogs.
  3. To nurture new ideas and facilitate future research collaborations between health bloggers.


How it all began

In September 2008, researchers from Rijeka School of Medicine in Croatia published a scientific article in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) titled Examining the Medical Blogosphere: An Online Survey of Medical Bloggers. Authors, Ivor Kovic, Ileana Lulic and Gordana Brumini, invited 197 top medical bloggers of English-language medical blogs to participate in an online survey. The survey included questions designed to evaluate bloggers’ Internet and blogging habits, blog characteristics, blogging motivations, and, finally, their demographics. This was one of the first surveys of medical bloggers, and certainly the first one ever published in a highly respectable scientific journal. Although some of the results were predictable, others were very peculiar and unexpected, resulting in a good reception of the article among medical bloggers. Full text version of the article is freely available at the publisher’s website for you to read. Furthermore, results are summarized in a slideshow and also available for more detailed analyzes in our reports section.

However, apart from answering some of the initial questions about medical bloggers and their blogs, the study simultaneously raised numerous new ones, as it so often happens in science. With the experience and knowledge gained during the research, the authors became aware of the most crucial problems standing in the way to a better understanding of the health blogosphere. Health Blogs Observatory was created to try to overcome these obstacles.


Encountered research problems

Several problems were identified during our research that need to be addressed in future studies.

  1. How to identify health bloggers
    This task is not as easy as it sounds. In fact, one of the major obstacles in our study was the fact that available directories and websites listing health blogs had major flaws. They were not regularly updated, had a lot of broken links, a lot of included websites were not even blogs, they had no structure or hierarchy to make finding specific blogs easier etc.
  2. How to contact health bloggers
    Bloggers’ direct contact information was in many cases not included in blog directories or even on their blogs. For this reason, a large percentage of bloggers could not have been contacted privately.
  3. How to motivate more bloggers to participate in the research
    In our study, bloggers replied in good numbers, but in lower numbers than we expected. Why did this happen, and how to work around it?
  4. How to include health blogs written in languages other than English
    There are numerous health blogs written in languages other then English. What are their roles and benefits to the local communities? How do we investigate them?
  5. How to advance survey questions
    Questions used in our survey were inspired by other already proven instruments, but health blogs have a lot of specific features. More questions regarding the social aspect of blogging are much needed, rather than those of technical nature.
  6. How to keep up with constant changes
    Blogosphere is highly dynamic, so surveys only present the situation at the time they are conducted. Prospective study design with annual surveys and larger number of participants would allow us to follow the evolution of health blogging.
  7. How to investigate characteristics of blog readers
    Blogs are all about the dialogue, the discussions they produce. This means that their followers are just as important as their authors. How do we learn more about the readers?


What is the role of Health Blogs Observatory

Health Blogs Observatory is conceived as an online community of health bloggers, a place of unity, an open online research lab where we can work together. It was created by the health bloggers and for the health bloggers. This is its major strength, because working together we can achieve much greater accomplishments than we could ever do individually. We can create the best web directory of health blogs and conduct research of highest quality. There is no one who understands health blogging better then us, health bloggers.

Our goals are important, because health blogs are important. They have the power to influence medical and health policy and such research could help us to better utilize them for the enhancement of teaching and learning productivity, advancements in scientific research, and support for continuing medical and patient education. Get involved today by editing our wiki and directory.