Social Medical Network

Abstract

The article presents a prototype social media network dedicated to the medical staff of Romania, from the architectural and functional points of view. The medical social media network is implemented as a web application for the time being, followed by the future implementation of a mobile application as well. This network allows for the medical staff in Romania to register, log in and virtually connect, with the purpose of sharing special medical cases or getting advised opinions for setting diagnostics. Any doctor in Romania will be able to create an account, add their information about their medical department/specialty in which they activate, their former studies, obtained diplomas/specializations, former or current occupied positions, resume etc. They will have the possibility to create posts, in the form of text, accompanied by medical images if needed. Oher users will be able to comment on the added posts. Each post or comment is considered a document, stored in the database. One of the most useful functionalities of the web application is the possibility of search - simple, based on the name of a doctor; or advanced - which implies searching in posts and comments using information retrieval algorithms. The web application is based on a MongoDB database, using MongoDB Atlas search, that is an embedded full-text search, build on Apache Lucene. The medical social media network is now in the testing phase, being utilized by a group of doctors from a private clinic in Romania. The feedback gathered from this usage is taken into consideration to improve and further develop the application.