ESP syllabus design in the age of mediacy: How do readership, viewership and sharingship interact?

As society changes, so do its texts and genres and the ways that information and knowledge, facts and opinions are constructed and communicated to others. One type of information and knowledge sharing in the Internet, here termed sharingship, has affected society in general and the medical sector, in particular, in recent years in relation to the process whereby factual information is brought together for individual and collective benefit. This process is illustrated below in relation to the main genres of electronic patient information management, usually known by their acronyms: PHRs [personal health records], PCHRs [personally-controlled health records] UHRs, [universal health records] EMRs [electronic medical records] and EHRs [electronic health records]. Medical ESP is also on the move, on its way to becoming part of the complex contemporary process of information sharing, regarding which reflection on a central question seems to be most urgent: who owns medical English and its texts and genres in the 21st century? Sharingship seems to provide an answer. In particular Medical ESP syllabus construction is no longer the privileged domain of a few people. In the spirit of sharingship, learner-centred approaches to ESP teaching are placing the construction and management of corpora, and hence syllabus construction itself, in the hands of students, all of which undoubtedly encourages their reflection on the nature, function and evolution of medical genres.