Sermo and the AMA

Peter Turner over at Opensource.Association has some interesting thoughts on Sermo and its relationships with the American Medical Association.

My point is why does the AMA need them to create an environment where “people come together, have their voices heard, and send messages out?” In fact, advocacy is not the main purpose of Sermo which is to sell aggregated information to institutional clients of Sermo....
Would you trust this model?

Doctors are paid for posting and even given Amazon gift cards to join. One student doctor said he was getting between $40-100 per month as a result of his postings. Clients (those in the lower half of the Sermo business model diagram below) pay a subscription fee and in return can post questions to the Sermo community. If doctors vote on one of these postings, they may be financially rewarded for “your astute observations.”

And I especially like the part that explains that full access to JAMA and the Archives journals are free on Sermo, but AMA members must pay for them.

-Wes