Internet in Medicine Course Week 4: Wikipedia and Medical Wikis March 24, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Medicine 2.0 Course, Video, Web 2.0, Wiki, Wikipedia.2 comments
I’ve been a Wikipedia administrator since 2006 so this topic is really close to my heart. First slideshow is dedicated to Wikipedia issues.
- Facebook + Google + Flickr (=) Wikipedia
- How to build an encyclopedia? Pay professionals? Certainly not.
- I believe in the power of masses.
- Wikipedia statistics, history (Larry Sanger, Jimmy Wales)
- 10 most visited websites in the world: Wikipedia is the 6th one.
- Why is Wikipedia great? (Free, fast, comprehensive, discussions, easy to edit, objective, etc)
- Why it isn’t great. (Almost the same reasons)
- Vandalism and how we fight it: Huggle
- Basics of editing an article; page history, talk pages
- A Wikipedia article minute by minute:
- Basic guidelines: Be bold, objective, no hoax, don’t copy and notability issues
- A few controversies (Seigenthaler in 2005; Congress in 2006; Essjay in 2007)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica vs Wikipedia; my analysis
- Medical Wikiproject, Medicine Portal, article assessment
- Editing process: from a Good Article to a Featured Article
- Sister projects
- Uncyclopedia
Take-home message:
Wikipedia is a great place to start your research, but should never be the last source you finish your research with.
Second slideshow was focusing on medical wikis.
- We need wikis for collaboration, teaching, organizing events, etc.
- Definition of Wiki
- Wikis in plain English:
- Medical wikis, featuring two examples: Askdrwiki and Radiopaedia
- How to launch a wiki on Wetpaint
- Semantic Wikis? Wikiproteins
- Classification of diseases, WHO project
- 3D Wiki = Second Life?
Take-home message:
If you want to share and create content online, a wiki is a great tool to use.
Trouble with Wikipedia October 24, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0, Wikipedia.1 comment so far
I’ve written numerous entries about how Wikipedia should be or not be used in medicine. Jacqueline at Laikas MedLiblog published a fantastic report in which she analyzed the pros and cons; how students, patients or doctors use Wikipedia and what kind of changes should be made in order to make it a better encyclopaedia.
Wikipedia is an admirable initiative. It is a large online collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia written by contributors around the world.
But the key question is whether you can rely on Wikipedia as the sole source for medical, scientific or even popular information.
I had a nice discussion with David Bradley and Frank Gaillard on Facebook focusing on this issue.
What’s on the web: Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens September 12, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Video, Virtuality, Web 3.0, What's on the web?, Wikipedia.3 comments
- Social Media’s Promise for Public Health (e-Patients.net)
- Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text (Wired Science)
Starting this fall, you’ll have a new reason to trust the information you find on Wikipedia: An optional feature called “WikiTrust” will color code every word of the encyclopedia based on the reliability of its author and the length of time it has persisted on the page.
- Doctors, Patients and Social Networks (Law.com) If you participate on a personal social network site, make it private. Keep professional relationships professional and personal relationships personal.
Conventional contact lenses are polymers formed in specific shapes to correct faulty vision. To turn such a lens into a functional system, we integrate control circuits, communication circuits, and miniature antennas into the lens using custom-built optoelectronic components. Those components will eventually include hundreds of LEDs, which will form images in front of the eye, such as words, charts, and photographs. Much of the hardware is semitransparent so that wearers can navigate their surroundings without crashing into them or becoming disoriented. In all likelihood, a separate, portable device will relay displayable information to the lens’s control circuit, which will operate the optoelectronics in the lens.
Rorschach Test Scandal on Wikipedia: Poll August 3, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in eHealth, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0, Wikipedia.10 comments
The Rorschach test is used for examining the personality characteristics and emotional functioning of patients as their perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed.
New York Times had a report about Dr. James Heilman who posted all 10 pictures on the site, along with research about the most popular responses to each. Of course, it led to a heated debate whether this information should be accessed on Wikipedia or not.
The article is protected from editing until 6, August but there are serious debates on the talk page. One example:
All of the pictures of the Inkblot Cards need to be removed. Posting them contaminates this tool, The Rorschach Test. Posting the popular responses further contaminates this test. It is a simple case of scuppering a professional clinical tool and needs to be stopped. – Comment of Edith Meyers who has PhD in Neuroscience and Clinical Psychology.
It has recently been suggested to use the hide template that would hide the word associations, so only those who want to read them would be motivated to click “show”.
As a medical student and Wikipedia administrator, I believe such things happen. It’s impossible to hide that kind of information, but revealing these possible answers can really ruin the test itself. Solution? A hide template with a clear warning for possible patients might be one of them. What do you think?
Medical research experts on Wikipedia July 16, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Medicine, Web 2.0, Wikipedia.6 comments
Though I haven’t been extremely busy on Wikipedia lately, I’ve been an administrator there for 3 years. I’m always glad when medical professionals come to edit articles, improve the quality and insert proper references into the medical entries. Yesterday, I saw this:
The National Institutes of Health and the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates the Wikipedia® online encyclopedia, are joining forces to make health and science information more accessible and reliable. This collaboration is the first of its kind for both organizations.
In these days when the number of page requests for flu or influenza is rising, it’s even more important to cover medical issues properly. From Wikimedia Blog:
Kevin Pho from Kevin, MD wrote in a recent article:
This isn’t to say patients shouldn’t research their medical conditions to become better informed. But it’s imperative that patients not rely on Wikipedia as the primary source of their health research. Websites sponsored by the government, academic medical centers, or professional medical societies all have more authoritative information that can be relied upon.
As Wikipedians always say, Wikipedia is a perfect place to start your research, but should never be the one you finish your search with.
Update: Susannah Fox shared her notes about the event on e-Patients.net.
What’s on the web? (14 June 2009) June 14, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Slideshow, Web 2.0, What's on the web?, Wikipedia.1 comment so far
- PubMed: What’s New and What’s Ahead: Shamsha Damani, M.D from the Anderson Cancer Center collected what’s new about Pubmed, the biomedical database.
- Digital Disease Detection — Harnessing the Web for Public Health Surveillance: New England Journal of Medicine opened up some space for web 2.0.
- Interview with Lee Aase (Ivor Kovic, MD): Lee Aase controls the online projects of Mayo Clinic.
- Keynote: Harnessing the Power of Social Networks
Jennifer Keelan, the Principal Investigator on the project, suggests that a major feature for users is the “relative anonymity where patients can seek out information and share health experiences in a safe environment. There is also a great potential for patients to “practice being patients” by virtually experiencing a mammogram or navigating a hospital’s virtual ward—they can gain insight into medical procedures and processes to become more informed.”
What’s on the web? (9 May 2009) May 9, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Video, Web 2.0, What's on the web?, Wikipedia.1 comment so far
- Mayo turns to social media to reach out to potential patients (Startribune.com)
-
What if Scientists Didn’t Compete? (The New York Times):
Instead of competing with my competitors, I invited them to contribute data to my paper so that no one got scooped. I figured out who might have data relating to my work (and who could get scooped) using public resources and then sent them an email. Now that I have done this, I am thinking: Why the hell isn’t everyone doing this? Why do we waste taxpayer money on ego battles between rival scientists?
- Research article: Inside the Health Blogosphere: Quality, Governance and the New Innovation Leaders (Health Blogs Observatory)
- 5 Innovative Ways Cell Phones Are Being Used To Save Lives (Cell Phones.org)
- Health 2.0: Patients as Partners (Business Week)
Seeking health information online: does Wikipedia matter? April 26, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Medicine 2.0, science, Web 2.0, Wikipedia.5 comments
Laurent MR and Vickers TJ from the Faculty of Medicine, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium published an article about Wikipedia and its health information database.
OBJECTIVE To determine the significance of the English Wikipedia as a source of online health information.
DESIGN We measured Wikipedia’s ranking on general Internet search engines by entering keywords from MedlinePlus, NHS Direct Online and the National Organization of Rare Diseases as queries into search engine optimization software.
RESULTS Wikipedia ranked among the first ten results in 71-85 % of search engines and keywords tested. Wikipedia surpassed MedlinePlus and NHS Direct Online (except for queries from the latter on Google UK), and ranked higher with quality articles.
CONCLUSION Based on its search engine ranking and page view statistics, the English Wikipedia is a prominent source of online health information compared to the other online health information providers studied.
Believe me, I’m one of the biggest fans of Wikipedia. I’ve been working on medical articles in Wikipedia since 2004!
We are working hard and trying to put proper references into the medical entries there, though it will still take a lot of time to create a really comprehensive and medically reliable encyclopaedia.
But do the authors think pageviews and search engine rankings can indicate the real quality of a medical article? Is that a joke?
If I can manage to make my article climb up on search engine result pages by using SEO tricks and direct people to my site, it means my content is medically appropriate?
I tell you the answer, it is not!
As Wikipedians say, Wikipedia is a fantastic resource, but should never be the last one you finish your research with…
Further reading:
- Medical wikis: the future of medicine?
- Launching MedPedia: From the perspective of a Wikipedia administrator
- Google vs Wikipedia? No!
- Medicine in Wikipedia: Reliable Information?
- Wikipedia: Reliable Sources and Gene Wiki
- Why to work in Wikipedia: I’ve been mentioned in Nature Medicine
- Ask Dr Wiki vs medicine in Wikipedia
- Medicine in Wikipedia and Citizendum
- Why to use Wikipedia: answer for Eye on DNA
UPDATE: Michael Laurent, one of the authors of the article, shared the full text with me and it turned out it’s quite easy to misinterpret the core points of the publication by reading only the abstract. I made that mistake myself as well. Here is what Michael had to say:
Wikipedia should not be ignored when it comes to online health information. It ranks high on Google and now we’ve determined exactly how high. That’s something that you read in almost any article on Wikipedia, but nobody had proven so far.
Being Productive Online: Time-Management Lifehacks April 1, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Blogging, Computer, Google, Health, Health 2.0, Life Hack, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Slideshow, twitter, Web 2.0, Wikipedia.Tags: blog, management, online, pubmed, RSS, time, twitter, youtube
17 comments
Recently, Ves Dimov at Clinical Cases and Images has come up with a great post on How to deal with the information overload from blogs, RSS and Twitter so I thought I would share my thoughts with you about time-management lifehacks.
The main concept is to centralize the flow of information into one or two sites. For me, these are GMail and Google Reader. It means I can control anything I’m interested in by visiting these places online.
How to keep up with Twitter?
I follow more than 1000 users and have more than 1500 followers, so I receive thousands of tweets every day. Here are a few things that save me time and effort.
- I use Tweetdeck and created several groups on Tweetdeck that let me filter useful information (e.g. Health 2.0, genetics, bloggers groups, etc.).
- I check Friendfeed Best of the day because it will filter the best discussions for me (though not all of my Twitter contacts are on Friendfeed).
- Microplaza automatically filters the most interesting discussions and links mentioned in my Twitter community. I get the updates through RSS so it’s quite easy to see what I miss when I’m not online.
How to follow the content you want to track?
- Google Alerts helps me track the content that is published about me, my blog or my service online.
- Twilerts and Tweetbeep do the same but via Twitter. Whenever a Twitterer mentions my name, blogs, favourite search terms, I will be notified via e-mail.
How to write posts fast on your blog?
I often use the Quickpress function on WordPress that lets me write a post from the admin dashboard in just seconds. I always have a huge backlog on Scienceroll so I created clearly defined directories in Firefox bookmarks and tag all the links I save there. It helps me organize the thousands of bookmarks I have and I always get a clear picture of what I should write about.
As I’m working on different computers, Foxmarks synchronizes my bookmarks automatically.
How to work on Wikipedia?
As an administrator, I have some duties, so I built a long watchlist to keep track of the changes in the entries I’m interested in. I also use Huggle to fight vandalism. With Huggle, reverting hundreds of vandalisms and notify vandals on their talk pages take only minutes and a few clicks.
How to use RSS?
I created categories based on priorities in Google Reader. I always know which category of feeds to check depending on how much time I have and whether I’m looking for blog topics or just interesting pieces of information.
I also receive the updates of my favourite Youtube channels, Pubmed search terms and Del.icio.us tags.
And you may also find the slideshow from Joshua Schwimmer interesting
If you have more tips on how to be productive online, please let me know.
Launching MedPedia: From the perspective of a Wikipedia administrator February 20, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0, Wiki, Wikipedia.17 comments
MedPedia, the medical online encyclopaedia was launched this week and I’m quite interested to see how it works. I’m an administrator in the English Wikipedia and I always think people should focus on one project instead of giving attention to several less important projects. When we have a Wikipedia, why do we need a Medpedia? A few words about how their system works:
The Medpedia Project is a long-term, worldwide project to evolve a new model for sharing and advancing knowledge about health, medicine and the body among medical professionals and the general public. This model is founded on providing a free online technology platform that is collaborative, interdisciplinary and transparent.
Anyone can contribute, and there are multiple ways of contributing. If you are a physician or Ph.D. in the biomedical field, you can create a profile and, if you are approved to become an Editor, you will gain editing privileges and will be able to make changes directly to the Medpedia wiki (see more below).
If you are anyone else, you can use the “Suggest Changes” link at the top of any page to make a suggestion for that page. An approved Editor will review and potentially add your suggestion.
We need Medpedia to provide reliable medical content? That’s what we are working on in Wikipedia.
I believe elitism kills content. Only the power of masses controlled by well-designed editing guidelines can lead to a comprehensive encyclopaedia.
- Moreover, Medpedia publishes content under the GFDL license. Correct me if I’m wrong, but anything they come up with can be transferred to Wikipedia as it will be published under the same license. It means the medical editors of Medpedia practically work for Wikipedia.
- They have nice images, but what about the sources? We have strict guidelines for uploading images to Wikipedia.
Anyway, I truly wish them luck with this project because if they manage to create a useful database of medical information, I will be more than happy to promote it.
What do you think about Medpedia?
