title: [Technology is changing: is the continuing professional development also changing?].
abstract: This paper considers the impact of the new information environment on the scientific communication. Reading behavior changes: today, we browse, scan, watch, receive an impression of something. The new reading habits are not simply determined by the new tools; they are rather influenced by the need to produce and share data and information, using personalized and mobile devices. Also the content formats change: researchers, clinicians, and nurses produce texts, figures, tables, photos, videos, tweets, blog posts and they share them to readers that have to collect, appraise, recombine and - most importantly - contextualize the information. This "continuous partial production" is consistent with a "continuous partial utilization" of data; this is a risk, but it is also an opportunity. On the one side, we risk a self-referential, individualized learning process; on the other side, we can enjoy the extraordinary chance to build a "shared learning environment", able to give a comprehensive solution to the challenges experienced by the health systems. Medical journals survive as valuable media to organize data and information; the new social web tools should support the traditional publishing patterns, to enhance the sharing of information, to help the appraisal of data, and to move forward new communities of learners.
authors.affiliation: Il Pensiero Scientifico Editore, Roma.
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: De Fiore
mesh_terms: D033181:Information Dissemination / Q000379:methods*; D007858:Learning; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000639:trends*; D011643:Publishing / Q000639:trends*; D011932:Reading