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July 23, 2008, 03:10 PM ET
Medical Version of Wikipedia, With Universities' Help, Gets Ready to Go Live
With the backing of some top medical schools, a foundation is calling on physicians and scientists to help them build a huge online encyclopedia of medicine, called Medpedia. Today the Medpedia Foundation raised the curtain slightly on their Web site, giving prospective collaborators a peek.
The effort is supported by Harvard Medical School, the Stanford School of Medicine, the University of Michigan Medical School, the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health, and several health organizations.
The goal is to have, by the end of 2008, a site that covers more than 30,000 medical diseases and conditions and 10,000 drugs, as well as medical procedures and facilities throughout the world. Articles will be contributed and edited by online collaborators, like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Unlike that effort, which allows everyone to contribute, Medpedia is only going to let certain people edit their content. Medical doctors, other clinical practitioners, and biomedical researchers can apply to become editors, and the foundation will screen and select them.
One wonders about those screening criteria, which have not been publicized, and whether Medpedia will require authors and editors to disclose financial conflicts, such as ties to pharmaceutical companies, as many medical journals do, so readers can judge potential bias for themselves. —Josh Fischman
Categories: Wikis
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