Within the knowledge economy, health professionals and e-health services must embrace the new “age of participation” and exist within the processes of produsage (West and West 2009, 1). Health professionals and the health industry must be at the forefront of new technologies and be able to lead patients and interested community members in their ability to contribute to the collective intelligence of the group as a whole and to collaborate online in the processes of turning products into artefacts.
This online environment facilitates the potential for physical goods to become more fluid and produsers in this context are not only involved in the produsage of knowledge about and reputations for physical goods, but also, through these produsage processes, provide advertising and marketing for these products (Bruns 2008, 393). For years we have been able to locate, rate, and review movies and restaurants. Now, sites such as Revolution Healthallow members to do just this within a health context as health products are turned into artefacts in the digital environment. Patients can rate and review certain drugs and treatment, which they have been prescribed, for effectiveness and price and this communal evaluation also extends to doctors and hospitals. Revolution Health also features applications that allow members to keep track of their medical history in a digital format. You can list your allergies, medications, and previous doctor and hospital records all in the one place. Changing doctors or moving to a new location; creating emergency information sheets; or preparing health information for that next big holiday has never been easier.
Bruns (2008, 378-9) argues that, “The technologies of produsage… highlight the fact that the industrial process is neither the natural nor necessarily the most productive or socially beneficial approach”. In considering the productive benefits of these produsage based e-health services it is important to consider Revolution Health’s business model. The site provides mostly free services and thus, makes money from products sold through the Revolution Health store and via on site advertising. Advertising and marketing content is often widely seen as untrustworthy in an era where multiple opinions and perspectives can be presented in the light of biases. By instead using recommendations and reviews provided by produsers for produsers a more objective evaluation can be made. While Revolution Health claims that these advertisements are not an endorsement for the featured products and services, the very existence of these ads within a social network that produsers align themselves with may influence their ratings and reviews of the advertised products. As previously discussed in my blog “…produsage almost always highlights the existence of open, participatory, collaborative, communally driven and determined, consensus-based models of development and decision making” (Bruns 2008, 388).
The Economist argued a few years ago that it was essential that the healthcare industry make patient profiles more interoperable, “out of paper files and into electronic databases”, and through a less centralised healthcare approach “enable individuals, at last, to have access to, and possession of, information about their own health.” Web 2.0 technologies are finally ensuring the emergence of decentralised healthcare and, as John Sharp of eHealth highlighted in a recent presentation, health professionals should take note of the power of produsage because produser patients already have: right now produsers are using these tools to “write about, talk about, and rank [health professional’s] performance”.
Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, And Beyond: From Production To Produsage. New York: Peter Lang.
Consequently, individuals can select for themselves the contributions they are the most qualified or able to make and these contributions are then evaluated by the online community. These communities are often comprised of a diverse population with varying perspectives and skills. As Benkler (2006) outlines in his 
