Online medical wiki encyclopedias

A number of online medical wiki encyclopedia exist including: Ask Dr Wiki, Ganfyd, Medcyclopaedia, Medpedia, Medicalopedia, Radiopaedia, WikiDoc and WikiSurgery.

AskDrWiki

AskDrWiki

URL	AskDrWiki.com
Commercial?	No
Type of site	Expert medical wiki project
Registration	Required with credentialing
Owner	Open Access Medical Informatics Group
Created by	Kenny Civello, Brian Jefferson
Launched	August 2006

AskDrWiki.com is an online medical wiki encyclopedia created by Cleveland Clinic Cardiology Fellows Kenny Civello and Brian Jefferson. The project was started as a response to the lack of free online medical information found in several community hospitals and was created to form a repository of cardiovascular information that could be readily accessed for reference. With the assistance of other cardiovascular fellows Dr. Mike McWilliams and Dr. Shane Bailey, the site became a useful resource for commonly accessed medical information for other cardiologist and fellows in training. AskDrWiki's earliest article was August 21, 2006. The site now serves as a place to publish medical review articles, clinical notes, pearls, and medical images. The wiki allows anyone with a medical background to contribute or edit medical articles of which there are just over 1000 as of 2010.

History

In December 2006, AskDrWiki was referenced in Dean Giustini's British Medical Journal article How Web 2.0 is Changing Medicine^[1] as one of the early adopters of using Video Hosting sites such as Youtube and Google video to host medical videos. AskDrWiki was then discussed in a Nature Medicine article discussing medical wikis.^[2] Since then AskDrWiki has been featured in other media including The Plain Dealer,^[3] Medical Economics^[4] and The American Medical Association News.^[5]

The purpose of the site is to provide reliable and easily accessed health information for the medical community including physicians, nurses, and medical students. The information published on the site is not meant to supersede medical training but to serve as a repository of medical review articles to give medical professionals an online source where they can review medical topics. The website is similar to Wikipedia because it runs on Mediawiki software allowing users to add and edit articles, but differs from Wikipedia because all users must be credentialed based on their medical training before they are allowed to publish. Its goal is not to compete with Wikipedia regarding consumer heath related topics, but to serve as an expert medical wiki and provide a source of up to date medical information for healthcare providers.

Ganfyd

Main article: Ganfyd

Ganfyd is a medical wiki community and online medical wiki encyclopedia,^[6] created in November 2005 by a group of doctors working in the United Kingdom. Only registered medical practitioners or persons working under their direction, and a small number of invited non-medical specialists, may edit ganfyd articles. The intention is to make the material reliable enough for professional medical use.

Medcyclopaedia

Main article: Medcyclopaedia

The Encyclopaedia of Medical Imaging^[7] is an online medical wiki encyclopedia of medical imaging used in radiology and radiography.^[8] Its online version is called Medcyclopaedia.^[9]

The encyclopedia is the result of a collaboration of the Nycomed Amersham Intercontinental Continuing Education in Radiology Institute (NICER Institute), Sweden, Department of Radiology, Lund University, Sweden, and Amersham Health, Oslo, Norway. It is provided and copyrighted by the healthcare unit of General Electric corporation. Retrieval of images (other than thumbnails) requires registration.

Medpedia

Main article: Medpedia

Medpedia

URL	Medpedia.com
Commercial?	No
Type of site	Wiki
Registration	Required
Available language(s)	English
Owner	Medpedia Inc., Ooga Labs
Launched	17 February 2009
Current status	beta

Medpedia is a collaborative project launched on 17 February 2009. Its aim is to create an open access online medical wiki encyclopedia^[10] in association with Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, University of Michigan Medical School, the U.K. National Health Service (NHS)^[11] as well as other contributors.^[12] Content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) license. It is composed of three primary components: the collaborative encyclopedia, a directory of health professionals, and Communities of Interest where medical professionals and non-professionals come together to discuss topics of interest.

Anyone with medical knowledge is welcome to become part of Medpedia's community. However, to qualify to edit or contribute to the main content, approved editors must have an M.D., D.O., or Ph.D. in a biomedical field. Others can contribute by writing in suggestions that will be reviewed by an approved editor.^[13]

Radiopaedia

Main article: Radiopaedia

Radiopaedia.org logo

Radiopaedia is a wiki-based rapidly growing international collaborative radiology educational resource with reference articles, radiology images, and patient cases.^[14] It also contains a radiology encyclopedia. It is aimed at both registrars, residents and consultant radiology staff.^[15] An iPhone/iPad application was released in 2009.

Similarly to Wikipedia, users of the site are free to add and edit content as well as to maintain their own case library. In an attempt to reduce vandalism and peer-review content, a panel of section editors are appointed time to time to review changes and ensure that the presented material is accurate and relevant as possible.

WikiDoc

WikiDoc

URL	wikidoc.org
Commercial?	No
Type of site	Wiki
Owner	WikiDoc Foundation
Created by	C. Michael Gibson

WikiDoc (alternatively spelled Wiki Doc) is an online medical wiki encyclopedia^[6] where contributors are not required to have credentials in a biomedical field (see for comparison Medpedia). WikiDoc was started in December 2005 by C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D., of Harvard Medical School.^[16][17] The original content came from Dr. Gibson's chief residency notes, board review notes, and content from a variety of copyleft sources including The National Library of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control, Wikipedia and Ask Dr Wiki.^[18] WikiDoc differs from Wikipedia in the following ways:^[19] it is oriented more to medical professionals, has medical news, has expanded images and videos, has greatly expanded differential diagnoses in a list format and a differential diagnosis project, has toolbar to search internet on the right hand side to gather articles, guidelines and slides, has toolbar on left to see what page most people looked at next, has a board review course (in Beta testing), has editors who watch over the content.

There is bidirectional flow of content between WikiDoc and Wikipedia.

WikiSurgery

Further information: WikiSurgery

WikiSurgery is a collaboratively built online encyclopedia hosted by the International Journal of Surgery.

References

1. ^ "How Web 2.0 is Changing Medicine"
2. ^ Keim, B (2007 Mar). "WikiMedia.". Nature medicine 13 (3): 231–3. doi:10.1038/nm0307-231. PMID 17342106. 
3. ^ A Wikipedia-style site for Medical Information
4. ^ Wiki for Physicians Gains Foothold
5. ^ Physician Wikis:Do-it-Yourself Textbooks
6. ^ ^{a b} Ginn S (August 2010). "Evidence based mental health and Web 2.0". Evid Based Ment Health 13 (3): 69–72. doi:10.1136/ebmh.13.3.69. PMID 20682812. 
7. ^ The Encyclopaedia of Medical Imaging. 8 vols, Lund, Sweden: NICER Institute/ISIS Medical Media, 2001. ISBN 82-91942-00-5. Hardcover
8. ^ Book review: "The Encyclopaedia of Medical Imaging. 8 vols", doi:10.1148/radiol.2272032510
9. ^ Medcyclopaedia - Medcyclopaedia 2007/08
10. ^ "Medpedia Launches Giant Wikipedia-Like Medical And Health Encyclopedia". medicalnewstoday.com. 2008-07-23. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/115950.php. Retrieved 2008-07-28. 
11. ^ Cross, Michael (2008-07-24). "NHS Choices will need to justify its £80m price tag". London: guardian.co.uk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/24/politics.it. Retrieved 2008-07-28. 
12. ^ Moore, Matthew (2008-07-23). "Medpedia, the medical Wikipedia, allows patients to diagnose themselves". London: telegraph.co.uk. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2448354/Medpedia,-the-medical-Wikipedia,-allows-patients-to-diagnose-themselves.html. Retrieved 2008-07-28. 
13. ^ Nye, Calley (2008-07-22). "MedPedia Is Wikifying the Medical Search Space". washingtonpost.com. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/23/AR2008072300256.html. Retrieved 2008-07-28. 
14. ^ "Radiopaedia.org, the wiki-based collaborative Radiology resource". http://radiopaedia.org/. 
15. ^ "Radiopaedia: a wiki for radiology « ScienceRoll". http://scienceroll.com/2007/03/18/radiopaedia-a-wiki-for-radiology/. 
16. ^ WikiDoc Editorial Board
17. ^ Daniel S. Mojon; Melissa L. Rethlefsen; Rothman, David J. (2008). Internet Cool Tools for Physicians. Berlin: Springer. pp. 114. ISBN 3-540-76381-3. 
18. ^ Acknowledgement and Attribution Regarding Sources of Content
19. ^ [1]

External links

• List of medical wikis
• A list by David Rothman