Abstract
This article focuses on a relatively new concept in the Internet: “Social networking” and especially on one program that successfully found a unique way to provide a social network for Radiology: Radiolopolis. Radiolopolis (www.Radiolopolis.com) is an international Radiology network to promote education, research and clinical practice in Radiology. What makes this Radiology community unique and special is that the founders of Radiolopolis implemented multiple educational and clinical/practical programs which have been developed over the past years.
Keywords: Radiology community, Radiology network, social networking, Radiology education, research, training, clinical practice, information exchange, teaching, Radiolopolis
EDUCATIONAL TREASURES IN RADIOLOGY
In this new series “Educational treasures in Radiology” we introduce the Radiology community to interesting and useful educational resources which can be found on the Internet. The World Wide Web (WWW) offers a vast richness of educational tools, programs and other resources. It becomes more difficult for the individual user to find the “best” resources and to separate the good from the “ordinary” or even from the bad ones. In each article of this series we present one selected online resource, which we think should be emphasized to the Radiology community.
This article focuses on a relatively new concept in the Internet: “Social networking” and especially on one program that successfully found a unique way to provide a social network for Radiology: Radiolopolis.
Radiolopolis (1) is an international Radiology network to promote education, research and clinical practice in Radiology. The founders of Radiolopolis developed in the past years several educational and clinical/practical programs (Fig. 1), which where originally running separately.
Figure 1.
Multiple programs for educational and clinical practice has been implemented into Radiolopolis. Radiolopolis is a Radiology community, combining multiple educational and clinical programs, where residents, radiologists and Radiology technologists from all over the world connect to peers, find information and share their knowledge with their colleagues.
However, it was recognized, that the full power of these programs could be best utilized when combined. That was how the idea of “Radiolopolis” was born. The founders of Radiolopolis continuosly add and incorporate more programs into Radiolopolis, so that they can be seamlessly used by its “citizens” directly from the website.
The purpose of this Radiology community is to create an easy opportunity to share information, where most of the needs of radiologists, residents, medicals students, technologists and industry can be melted within one central Radiology network. It is based on a “taking and giving” principle, where users share their knowledge with each other.
Radiolopolis became a true international Radiology community with members from virtually every country in the world. It has been founded in February 2009 and has been already grown to over 1200 members in less than 6 months.
Radiolopolis offers a multitude of features (Fig. 2), such as:
Figure 2.
Screenshot of the Radiolopolis startpage. Radiolopolis offers a multitude of unique features for Radiology such as a section for Radiology art (1), Radiology boards preparation and Radiology Mock boards (2), a Radiology museum (3), Case of the Week (4), Radiology videos (5), and many more features for education, research and clinical practice (red horizontal oval).
Find colleagues with similar interests, create new connections and expand your professional network
Discuss Radiology topics in dedicated forums - from residency to practice
Prepare for the Radiology boards
Find tutorials and eLearning material
Share images, videos, teaching files and lectures
Simplify research and find partners
Create or join research and study groups
General and Radiology specific search engines
Read Radiology news from multiple subspecialties
Literature publication in cooperation with the JRCR (2)
Find helpful tools for the daily work (calculators, case tracker, clinical and research tools, etc.)
and many more features which would go beyond the scope of this article.
It has to be emphasized that Radiolopolis is a professional Radiology community and only Radiology related professionals will be accepted as members. The reason is to keep the community free from non-Radiology related contributions which can be sometimes disturbing as experienced in other social networks such as facebook (3) or my space (4).
Radiolopolis is continuosly working on expanding its educational value and searching for motivated volunteers who would like to advance this community by providing contents or other contributions. Everybody who is interested may contact the Radiolopolis administration at radiolopolis@edurad.org.
Radiolopolis is funded by the non-profit organization EduRad (5) and is free to use.
Do you have a potential topic for “Educational treasures in Radiology”? Then please contact journals@edurad.org.
REFERENCES
- 1.Radiolopolis - the professional Radiology network for education, research and clinical practice. [last accessed: 08/10/2009]. URL: http://www.radiolopolis.com.
- 2.Talanow R. A new generation of journals is born. Radiology Case. 2008 Aug;2(1):5–7. doi: 10.3941/jrcr.v2i1.26. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 3.facebook. [last accessed: 08/10/2009]. URL: http://www.facebook.com/
- 4.my space. [last accessed: 08/10/2009]. URL: http://www.myspace.com/
- 5.EduRad - Dedicated to Education in Medicine and Radiology. EduRad; Cleveland Heights: [last accessed: 08/10/2009]. URL: http://www.edurad.org/ [Google Scholar]