The Wikipedia of Medicine for Health Professionals
Yup!! its “soon” going to be here.
Who stole my idea.. lol..
Medpedia is an open content project to create a medical encyclopedia in association with Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, University of Michigan Medical School, NHS as well as other contributors. Content is licenced under the GFDL and will run under the MediaWiki software. Edits can only be made by attributed authors.
It is expected to launch in late 2008.
This was hovering in my mind since long ever since I had seen the launch of wikipedia.
I was eagerly waiting for an online collaborative Medical encyclopedia.
Then again, there are issues when it relates to such sensitive topic of Medicine,
where we simply cannot allow any loony tom, dick and harry to have a say or provide wrong information relating to Health. But Medpedia has a solution, it is allowing only registered doctors to sign up and help contribute to the buildup of medical information, with appropriate referencing to evidence based information. So I am so enthusiastically waiting to jump in and help contribute as soon as I become a Doctor in a year.
I did start my own WikiMed to collaborate on Med Student notes and questions – all exam oriented to help Medical students build their concepts and teach each other through contributing and developing simplified notes. But seems I have been the only one so far to have put up things there and people are just too busy or impassive towards it. Very dissapointing to see such stolidness amongst fellow colleagues.
For more information, here are two good discussions on MedPedia,
MedPedia_vs_Google_Knol and
medpedia-is-wikifying-the-medical-search-space
The Wikimed thing was a good idea. Perhaps, it would gain popularity if there is a clear structure to it. Like a list of topics that you would like people to contribute. Visitors to the wiki could then look at this list and then add. So you’d have a clear overall picture.