Informing the Design of a health virtual community of practice: a knowledge translation approach

Abstract

Access to knowledge forms an integral part of the continuous learning processes of medical and other health professionals throughout their career. Modern technologies have become instrumental in ex-tending learning processes to the online realm, particularly through the use of social media technologies. Health Practitioners’ (HPs) exploitation of online social media technologies for online learning and knowledge sharing purposes has evolved into Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoP). However, there is limited research on the types of knowledge being shared to fulfil the notion of ‘knowledge-into-action’ in the healthcare domain. In addition, little is known of the use of online social media..