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Medical wikis: the future of medicine? March 27, 2007

Posted by Bertalan Meskó in Invention, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0, Wiki, Wikipedia.
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I still believe that these medical wikis will play an important role in medical education. But they have to improve a lot of things (number of contributors, guidelines, layout). Let’s take a look at the active medical wikis, and let me know if I missed any (actually I’ve found 16 wikis - I thought there were only a few).

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  • Flu Wiki: The purpose of the Flu Wiki is to help local communities prepare for and perhaps cope with a possible influenza pandemic.
  • Wikisurgery: Wikisurgery is a free surgical encyclopedia for surgeons and their patients.
  • Ganfyd.org: Ganfyd is a collaborative medical reference by medical professionals and invited non-medical experts.

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healthgrid.jpg

  • Billingwiki: a collaborative medical billing knowledge base for practice profitability and compliance. It includes fresh views and new concepts leveraging state of the art technology.
  • Student Doctor Network Wiki: is a nonprofit organization committed to assisting health professionals at all stages of their careers through volunteer-run and community-based discussion.
  • Medtech Wiki: Medgadget’s wiki aiming to create a comprehensive database of medical technologies and devices, including specifications, methods of use, and commentary on efficacy and other issues.
  • AIDS wiki: a community gathering place for AIDS dissidents to assist and foster activism. The wiki reflects a pro-dissident POV, although the diversity of opinion present among AIDS dissidents is respected.
  • WikiMD: is a free Medical Encyclopedia editable by anybody. It was created by a resident in Internal Medicine in Philadelphia.

wikimd.jpg

  • WikiKidney: This wiki has been developed by The Nephron Information Center for the renal community of doctors and allied health personnel, industry, payors, CMS, patients and their families.
  • Medic Wikia: The aim of this wiki is to develop a collaboratively edited information resource focused on medical issues, treatment protocols, ethical standards, and historical information of use to street medics.

Update (many thanks to KJ and David Rothman!):

  • EBM Librarian wiki: The purpose of this wiki is to develop a community of librarians who are involved in teaching and supporting the practice of evidence based medicine (ebm) or evidence based practice (ebp).
  • EHealth wiki: a platform for the eHealth research community to collaboratively develop eHealth and Internet research ideas and observations into papers, proposals, research protocols, projects and programs.
  • Medical Images Wiki: The CHERRI report outlines a persuasive approach that could enable the sharing of medical images to support education needs (clinical recordings in academic, non-clinical settings).
  • PubDrug: PubDrug.org is an open access directory of drug monographs on a wiki platform.

pubdrug.jpg

  • Quality of medical data: This wiki was created to be a research resource for epidemiologists, healthcare workers, insurers, and patients interested in the issues surrounding the quality of medical data.

meddata.jpg

  • WikiCancer: Cancer stories,support and infromation.

wikicancer.jpg

  • WikiHealth: the collaborative online health and wellness community where your participation makes a difference!
  • WikiRadiology: The free medical imaging resource created by the radiology community.
  • WikiEcho: A wiki dedicated to echocardiology.

wikiecho.jpg

Comments»

1. KJ - March 28, 2007

http://medicine.zh-tw.org, 醫學快紀, the first Chinese Medicine wiki. Most articles in this wiki are Taiwan medical students notes and the overview of Taiwan medical colleges.

2. David Rothman - March 28, 2007

Also:
* Clinfowiki
* EBM Librarian (Recommended!)
* EHealth Wiki (JMIR)
* KidneyWiki
* Medical Images Wiki
* Medical Imaging
* Medical Practice Billing and Compliance
* Nursing Wiki
* OpenWetWare*
* PubDrug
* The Quality of Medical Data
* UBC HealthLib Wiki (Recommended!)
* WikiCancer
* WikiHealth
* Wikisurgery

Links here: http://davidrothman.net/2007/01/02/lots-more-medical-wikis/

3. davidrothman.net » Blog Archive » Updated list of medical Wikis - March 28, 2007

[...] to Bertalan for pointing out a few I hadn’t [...]

4. ncurse - March 28, 2007

Thank you, KJ and David! I hope it’s a proper list now. I updated the article.

5. ajcann - March 28, 2007

Argh, no no, NO! Death by wikis!
http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/2007/03/askdrwiki.html

6. GerardM - March 29, 2007

Try http://wikiprofessional.info ..
Thanks,
GerardM

7. ncurse - March 29, 2007

Wow! I must write a whole post about it. Thanks for the link!

8. Waldir - March 29, 2007

I wonder why some of these wikis dont merge with each onter into a single big medical wiki… at least the less specialized; their user base would grow, they’d have mnore content, i think there would be many advantages from that, it’s not very effective to have scattered work done in such a decentralized way.

9. ncurse - March 29, 2007

You have the point! But how can we convince these wikis to merge? It’s nearly impossible as nobody will give up their work…

But you’re absolutely right!

10. Doug - March 29, 2007

Something like Yahoo Answers is much better than a wiki for medical information.

When googling for medical info, I consistently find the best info on discussion forums and/or medical info sites, not wikipedia or another wiki. And this information is better than the info you get from your own doctor most of the time.

And as to those arguing against the proliferation of wikis, it is definitely a good thing. For people involved (peripherally or centrally) in professional communities (such as educational, medical, programming, etc.), the best wikis are those specialized in their area, not wikipedia.
Compare for example the edutech wiki (google it) to wikipedia. It blows the ed tech stuff on wikipedia out of the water a hundred times over.

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[...] Medical wikis: the future of medicine? « ScienceRoll: I still believe that these medical wikis will play an important role in medical education. But they have to improve a lot of things (number of contributors, guidelines, layout). Let’s take a look at the active medical wikis, and let me know if I missed any (actually I’ve found 16 wikis - I thought there were only a few). [...]

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Web 3.0 and Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine

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In Web 3.0 and medicine, …

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19. archilooks - February 2, 2008

More info about HIV AIDS INFECTION :
http://www.geocities.com/hivaidsinfection
http://www.hivaids.co.nr

20. Richard - March 25, 2008

More info on cardiac ultra sound scan

http://www.wikiecho.com

21. Bertalan Meskó - March 25, 2008

Thank you, Richard! I will add it to my list.

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