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. The Project provides a free online technology platform to any individual or organization that can benefit from its use, available at www.medpedia.com. Users of the platform include medical and scientific journals, medical schools, research institutes, medical associations, physicians, hospitals, for-profit and non-profit organizations, companies, expert patients, policy makers, students, non-professionals taking care of loved ones, individual medical professionals, scientists, etc.
As Medpedia grows over the next few years, it will become a superior resource of health and medical information without charge in multiple languages to anyone worldwide with Internet access. The information in this clearinghouse will be easy to discover and navigate, and the technology platform will continue to grow as more uses are found for it.
In association with Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, University of Michigan Medical School and other leading global health organizations, Medpedia will be a commons for the gathering of the information and people critical to health care. Many organizations have united to support The Medpedia Project. See the Record of Merit.
The goal of The Medpedia Project is to evolve a new model for how the world will access medical knowledge in the future.
The specifics of the model will evolve over time, but Medpedia is founded on several principles that will remain:
Wisdom of the Many - Medpedia is an iterative environment where content is written, edited and constantly re-edited by an ever-larger group of Editors. Hundreds of Editors can read the Articles and monitor changes using the Recent Changes pages. The model, therefore, is that incorrect information will be corrected quickly, and the overall accuracy of Medpedia will always be improving.
Collaborative - Medpedia gives consumers, medical professionals, and organizations/companies their own ways to contribute. Each has a role in the real world and each can be effective in contributing to Medpedia. The tools and permissions for those contributions will evolve over time as the system matures.
Interdisciplinary – Medpedia is able to tap knowledge from all medical and health professionals, starting with physicians and Ph.D. researchers, but safely including anyone with expertise and motivation, including nurses, public health officials, social workers, etc.
Appropriate language - Medpedia provides a structured environment encouraging two types of content to emerge: "Plain English" pages for the lay-person, and "Clinical" pages for medical professionals.
Transparent - All members must have a profile with their real names and must disclose any financial, personal or professional affiliations that may influence their participation on Medpedia. Every change made to the site is attached to a member's profile and every change is visible in the logs of the knowledge base.
Self Service – Medpedia is a platform of free tools anyone can use. Medical professionals can use Medpedia as a knowledge sharing and communications tool, a recruiting tool for research collaborators, a clinical referral network, an article publishing network, and a way to develop their reputation in their areas of expertise. Organizations can use Medpedia as a communications tool for their members and to fulfill their mission. And anyone may use Medpedia set alerts to follow topics of interest, to learn and collect knowledge, to teach and share information and to elevate the best medical information on the web.
Free, Web-Based, Real Time – Due to the nature of the Web, improvements made on the website are immediately available worldwide for zero incremental cost.
Medpedia is intended to benefit anyone with an interest in health, medicine and the body, including medical professionals, medical organizations (for-profit and non-profit), and the general public.
For medical professionals, it's a platform to share the most up-to-date medical knowledge, to get listed for their expertise in the Directory, to network with peers for career advancement, and a place to build their national and international reputations in their areas of expertise. It's also a place for medical professionals to set the record straight on issues where they have strong passion and expertise.
For health-related organizations, Medpedia provides a free technology platform that will help them organize and communicate with their members and employees, an opportunity to work together to reach the widest audience possible, and a place to distribute information to fulfill their missions.
Over time, for the general public, Medpedia will become a comprehensive and leading edge educational resource, and it will provide the ability to connect with a community of people - both professional and non-professional - that share focused medical interests.
Medpedia.com Inc. is funded and maintained by Ooga Labs, a technology greenhouse in San Francisco developing several for-profit, mission-oriented companies to address worldwide needs in health, education, and activism.
The current plan is to support the costs of operation with non-invasive, text-based advertising on the Medpedia website through third-party ad networks such as Google's AdSense. Next to these ads on the page will be a link "Flag inappropriate ads" so that the community can keep the ads on the site clean and useful.
Over 100 leading organizations are involved with The Medpedia Project. See the Record of Merit.
The main early, visionary, supporters of Medpedia have been Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, and University of Michigan Medical School.
The Medpedia wiki is the collaborative encyclopedia and resource for information about health, medicine and the body. Only physicians and Ph.D.s are allowed to edit the Articles on Medpedia. Non-Editors can suggest changes that must be approved by an Editor before going live on the site.
Over 100 Organizations in the US and the UK have contributed, or pledged to contribute, seed content and released that content from copyright restrictions so that it can be freely editable by the Medpedia community of Editors. Hundreds of physicians and researchers have signed up to edit the Articles and thousands more are expected in the coming years. Non-Editors, which can be either medical professionals who are not Physicians or PhD researchers as well as members of the general public, can make suggestions for changes to the Articles by creating a profile on Medpedia and then clicking on the "Suggest Changes" link on the top of any Article page.
Content on the Medpedia wiki is freely available for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License (CC-BY-SA) except as otherwise noted. This means content on the wiki may be copied, modified and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges Medpedia as the source of the Article. To grow the commons of free knowledge and free culture and to remain compatible with Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and other open content projects on the Web, Medpedia moved from the GFDL 1.3 license to CC-BY-SA on July 20, 2009. Please weigh in on this subject.
Initially, The Medpedia Project staff and a few volunteers will oversee activity on the site. Over time, as the community of Editors grows, a hierarchy of volunteer administrators will take over the day-to-day governance and policy setting of the community. Please weigh in on this subject.
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.
To receive editor privileges, a medical professional who is a physician or Ph.D. in a bio-medical field must fill out their professional profile and be verified by the Medpedia community. A verifiable professional profile will include real name, educational backgrounds, descriptions of areas of expertise and disclosures about compensation and conflicts of interest. Only physicians and Ph.D.s in a biomedical field will be allowed to make edits directly to Medpedia.
Anyone in the health and medical fields is invited to create a profile and be a Member of the Medpedia professional networking community, and anyone is encouraged to contribute by writing in suggestions for changes to the site using the "Suggest Changes" link at the top of each Article page. Those suggested changes must be approved by an Editor before going live on the site.
All potential Editors are carefully screened to ensure that they are qualified physicians and/or Ph.D.s in a biomedical field. Before a physician can be approved, his or her medical license must be found and double-checked against various data points provided by the applicant. A physician must be in good standing. A Ph.D.'s faculty listings and publications serve as initial identification and these are cross-checked against the information they have listed. In all cases, academic, practice and research information is also carefully investigated. If any doubt remains, a phone conversation and references provide the final verification.
If you are a skilled wikimaster and would like to help the Project with formatting, linking, templates, and other wiki-related tasks, please send an email here.
Yes. Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.s) who are licensed physicians and surgeons in good standing can be approved as Editors.
Any approved Medpedia Editor may choose to be a Lead Editor of an Article. By claiming an Article, Lead Editors agree to monitor edits and suggested changes made to the page. The goal is to provide active Editors credit for their significant contributions to the Project and motivation to keep the page up-to-date – as well as provide a forum to recognize physicians and Ph.D.s in their areas of expertise. To be a Lead Editor of an Article, click on the "Be a Lead Editor of this Article" link in the upper right corner of the Article page you want to claim.
Originating Authors are Editors who create a new page or take an existing page with very little information on it and transform it into an Article of very high quality. If you are accepted as an Originating Author for an Article, it will be permanently recorded on the Originating Authors page with a link to the Article and you will get a permanent designation on your Medpedia profile along with a link. This recognition provides an incentive for you to continue to follow and improve a page over time as well as a way to set the record straight on a medical topic in your area of expertise, and to be recognized for significant original and important contributions to Medpedia. For more, see the Originating Author Guidelines.
Admins are a combination of Medpedia, Inc. employees and volunteer Editors. Medpedia Admins are responsible for approving Originating Authorship credit. Eventually, it is expected that Committees and their members will be responsible for granting Original Authorship credit.
Health and medical information is a special form of information because it has safety implications. Physicians and Ph.D.s in the biomedical fields have gone through extensive training and screening before receiving their degrees, and those degrees can serve as an efficient proxy for the Medpedia community to judge an Editor's ability to contribute accurate and up to date information to the encyclopedia. Also significant is that the veracity of an applicant's degree status is discoverable.
It has been pointed out that not all physicians and Ph.D.s are fit to edit. The goal is that the transparency of the system will help reveal if there is an Editor who may not be qualified to continue editing even if they have a degree.
On the other hand, it's been pointed out that there may be people like nurses and expert patients who have valuable knowledge and could contribute an incredible amount. (Clearly there are many people who fall in that camp, and those people can thus create a profile on the system and contribute to Medpedia through the "Suggest Changes" link on every Article. Their suggestions will be reviewed by approved Editors.) The challenge in making such people full Editors is that it's not as easy to draw the line between an "expert patient" and a regular patient. Over time, there may be accurate and reliable methods for making such determinations on a case by case basis. Please weigh in with ideas on this subject.
Yes. German, Spanish and French, Japanese, and Chinese are an upcoming focus. The Medpedia Project will also include a platform to let any language have its own version. The goal of The Medpedia Project is that everyone have free access worldwide.
No. Medpedia Editors are volunteers. Editors receive personal benefits by being involved, including establishing their reputations in their area of expertise, connecting with other experts and journal Editors in their field, and distinguishing themselves to their peer Group. Many Editors are also passionate about the subjects they write about and want to set the record straight.
The seed content available on Medpedia at launch is up to date, accurate, and provided by reputable sources. After beta launch in February 2009, once Editors start making edits and adding new pages to the seed content, it is possible, and even likely, that there will be mistakes and there will be language that is unclear. This is the nature of a collaborative wiki.
It is anticipated that hundreds of Editors will soon be reading the Articles and monitoring changes using the Recent Changes page. The model, therefore, is that incorrect information will be corrected quickly, and the overall accuracy of Medpedia will always be improving.
Thus, if you see information you think is wrong, it is in your power to correct it. Please create a profile , and make the change yourself if you are a physician or Ph.D., use the Suggest a Change option on Article pages, or email Medpedia and it will be reviewed by an approved Editor and possibly changed.
The content on, or accessible through, Medpedia.com is for informational purposes only. Medpedia is in no way a substitute for professional advice or expert medical services from a qualified healthcare provider. Further, Medpedia does not recommend or endorse any treatment, institution, professional, physician, product, procedure or other information that may be mentioned on Medpedia. Please weigh in on this subject.
In the spirit of building this collaborative resource, forward thinking institutions have contributed seed content to the wiki pages and released that content from copyright restrictions so that it can be freely editable by the Medpedia community of Editors. Organizations are honored for their contributions on the Record of Merit page. An organization's content will be absorbed into the general body of Medpedia content, and over the course of several months or years, may become unrecognizable in comparison to its original form. Organizations are not required to pay Medpedia to participate, and Medpedia offers no monetary compensation to any organization for participation.
If you are an organization with medical content that you would like to donate to Medpedia, apply to contribute content.
Given the collaborative, volunteer nature of Medpedia, there is no schedule for changes and improvements to the pages. As Editors have time, have access to more information, or as new health-related discoveries emerge, new pages will be created and existing pages will be updated. Eventually, thousands of people will be editing Medpedia, and the overall accuracy and comprehensiveness of the site will be improving on a daily basis.
To help minimize inaccuracies and abuse, the Medpedia editing process must be transparent, including transparency around each Editors' conflicts of interest. Therefore, individuals who want to edit Articles must make themselves known through a public profile, and then be approved by the Medpedia community.
If you have medical expertise and would like to write and edit Medpedia Articles, create a profile and start using the "Suggest Changes" link on the top of Articles pages that interest you. If you are a physician or Ph.D. in good standing, you can be an Editor of Medpedia.
Viewers of Medpedia - meaning people who are using the information on Medpedia and not contributing – will not need to log in and their identities will never be exposed publicly by visiting the website. For more see the Medpedia Privacy Policy.
The Medpedia Project takes conflicts of interest seriously. All Editors of Medpedia have an ethical obligation to disclose any financial, personal or professional associations that may influence their writing and/or editing on Medpedia. Every change they make to the site is attached to their profile and every change is visible in the logs of the wiki. In some ways, then, discovering and flagging conflicts of interest is easier on Medpedia than it is in the real world. See Conflicts of Interest and Disclosures for specifics on what information must be disclosed. Please weigh in on this subject.
The Editorial aim of the community is to keep the "Plain English" Article understandable by someone who reads at a high school level. The information on those pages should be structured to answer the most common questions people have about a topic and be written with little medical jargon so the everyday user can understand. Each page should be laid out so that all of the information on a topic is available on one page in an easy to read format.
More technical content will be available on a "Clinical" Article sister page allowing for interested readers and Clinicians to find and share more in-depth references and clinical materials.
Committees are the organizations inside The Medpedia Project which take responsibility for monitoring and editing Article pages in the medical encyclopedia. Only approved Editors can join Committees on Medpedia. In Committees, top people in their field are constantly monitoring Articles to ensure they are up to date and accurate. Each Committee has a five-person Board. Membership in the Board of each Committee is currently first come, first served, and carry a one year term. The rules about Boards will inevitably evolve over time and become more complex. As an Editor, you can create a new Committee in your area of expertise if there isn't one, but it must be approved by Medpedia. There can only be one Committee per subject. For instance, there will not be two "Childhood Obesity" Committees. Once you create a Committee, other Editors will be able to join it.
To create a committee, log into your account, go to your dashboard and click the "Create a Committee" link on the right side of the page. Follow the steps to create a committee and invite experts in the field to be on the board or committee. Each Committee must first be approved by Medpedia to minimize overlap between Committees.
Any approved Editor of Medpedia can be on the Board of a Committee, and five board seats are available. Availability is first come, first serve. The term of a board member is one year.
| Group | Committee | Community of Interest | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Members/ Creators | Medical Professionals on Medpedia | Only approved Editors | Any member of Medpedia |
| Purpose | Communications tool for working medical organizations and associations | Information created on the wiki | Sharing information on medical topics of interest |
| Control | Members who are Admins | Medpedia | Medpedia |
| Topic Restrictions | No | Yes, Committee topics must be unique | No |
Medpedia is a collaborative body of work where content is written, edited and constantly re-edited by the Medpedia community of Editors. It's not licensed from third parties, and the content is not top-down and static, but rather, constantly changing and growing. Much of the design and many of the features of Medpedia are intended to nurture and support the community of Editors, who have highly valuable and specialized information to share.
Medpedia content is freely usable under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License (CC-BY-SA) license. People are encouraged to discover ways to use this valuable resource.
The founders and Editors of Wikipedia, more than anyone, demonstrated the power of collaborative communities to produce a complex and accurate information resource. They are the leading open source community and the inspiration for the wiki portion of Medpedia.
However, the wiki portion of Medpedia is only part of the entire Medpedia Project.
Please weigh in on this subject.
Medpedia Alerts is a platform on Medpedia for displaying Twitter and news alerts. Any member of the Medpedia community can submit a short text description and a link to include an alert in the Medpedia Alert Stream, or submit a Twitter account to be integrated into the platform on an ongoing basis. Submissions to the Alerts platform will be reviewed by the community before they go live and will included in the appropriate Alert categories. Suggest new categories or give feedback. Click on the see more link in a category to see more alerts and subscribe to the alerts feed.
Medpedia Answers is a platform for contributing questions and answers to the knowledge base. Anyone with a profile on Medpedia can ask or answer a question about health medicine and the body and the questions and answers must follow strict guidelines. Enter your question with a short description and you will receive an email when someone in the community answers it. Questions and answers are to be used for general information purposes only, not as a substitute for in-person evaluation or specific professional advice. Inappropriate questions will be flagged and deleted by the community. Suggest new categories or give feedback.
The Medpedia Answers Top Contributors list displays the current most active and most popular contributors to Medpedia Answers. Top contributors are recognized for answering questions, choosing the best answers to questions, and by having answers voted as useful or the Best Answer by the community. Extra points are awarded for first responses to unanswered questions.
The content on or accessible through Medpedia.com is for informational purposes only. Medpedia is not a substitute for professional advice or expert medical services from a qualified healthcare provider. Read more
Medpedia News & Analysis allows high-quality health and medical content sources to self-organize by category and keywords on Medpedia, and then inter-link with Article pages and other parts of Medpedia.
Content submitted to Medpedia and accepted by the community appear in the News & Analysis section of the site and is organized by category and keywords. Sources reflect a wide range of professional, academic and scientific topics and are referenced on related articles and patient Communities. Content in the Medpedia News & Analysis section is not part of the ( CC-BY-SA ) license of Medpedia and copyright is held soley by the author(s). Organizations and individuals who regularly publish medical and health content online are encouraged to submit their source to the News & Analysis section of Medpedia at http://www.medpedia.com/news_analysis . Please weigh in on this feature
Medpedia Clinical Trials is a platform for searching clinical trials by specific condition or topic. The data is updated regularly from ClinicalTrials.gov, which is a registry of federally and privately supported clinical trials conducted in the United States and around the world. The search results provide details on a trial's purpose, who may participate, locations, and sometimes contact information. All members of Medpedia can leave comments on clinical trial pages. The information in Medpedia Clinical Trials should not be a substitute for professional advice or expert medical services from a qualified healthcare provider.
It is a free online professional network for the health and medical community. When you join the Medpedia professional network, you create a profile that summarizes your medical experience and accomplishments. Your profile helps you find and be recognized by peers, coworkers, colleagues, clients, and partners. You can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join Medpedia.
It's also a free social network system for professional organizations in the medical community such as associations, societies, and for-profit companies.
Anyone who is involved as a professional in the medical and health industry. This includes physicians, dentists, researchers, journal Editors, reference librarians, nurses, hospital administrators, employees of medical device companies, employees of pharmaceutical companies, employees of health insurance companies, employees of local and national governmental bodies who are involved in health, employees of Non-Governmental Organizations involved with issues of health, journalists and bloggers who write regularly on health issues, etc.
Yes. If you have an interest in health, medicine, and the body, you are encouraged to get involved and learn, share, create and participate. You may create a profile, build your list of medical topics of interest to follow, find and join Communities of Interest on a medical topic, and suggest changes to Articles.
No. Qualified physicians and Ph.D.s in a biomedical field will receive privileges to edit the wiki directly, but it is not required. Everyone else can contribute by writing in suggestions for changes using the "Suggest Changes" link at the top of each Article.
If you are a medical professional, you should only invite medical professionals you know and trust to Medpedia and that you want in your network. Accept contact requests only if you are sure you know the sender and want that person in your network.
If you are a medical professional on Medpedia, the best way to grow your network is to send invitation emails to medical professionals you know and trust. To do this, click the ‘Invite" link in the upper right hand corner of the screen and then enter the email addresses of the medical professionals you want to invite to join your network.
You can also grow your professional network by joining Groups, joining Committees, and editing pages on the wiki in your areas of expertise. This will put you in contact with people you should probably have in your network.
If you are a medical professional, only people in your network can send you messages and vice versa. In other words, only people you have invited or approved as someone you know
Your profile is public, so it is viewable to anyone on the Web. However, your phone number and your email address default to "private" so only people in your approved network can see them. If you decide to make your phone number public, you may do so by logging in, going to "My Profile" and changing the default setting on phone number and email address. You may also edit or delete any information from that same page.
Yes. To delete your profile, log in to your account and click Account in the upper right corner of the screen. This loads the Account Settings page. At the bottom of the page under the header My Account, click ‘Remove my account' to delete it from Medpedia.
You do not need to include a picture of you in your profile. However, most members see adding a professional picture as a benefit to getting their listing in the Directory. Typically, the more comprehensive you are in filling out your profile, the more useful your profile will be. Intended uses include: a way for others in the medical community to find you, a way to attract referrals, a way to be contacted for speaking engagements and research, and as your up-to-date online professional profile that you control.
Only medical professionals who are part of the Medpedia professional network and directory can create a Group. Groups allow any health-related set of people - associations, schools, departments in schools, companies, hospitals, departments within hospitals, working Groups, organizations etc – to network and communicate with each other. (If you are interested sharing information with others on a medical topic, consider joining or creating a Community of Interest).
Once you create a Group, you can invite others to join it. You should consider giving special administration ( "admin") privileges to several other people to help you administer the Group.
To create a Group, log into Medpedia, go to your dashboard and click the ‘Create a Group' link on the right side of the screen. Write a short description of your Group's mission and charter and then invite others to join your Group.
As an administrator you can also send a message to all members of a Group, enable discussions, edit the Group description, add a logo for the Group, revoke or grant memberships and make other members of the Group administrators.
To leave a Group, log in, go to your profile and select the Group you want to leave. This will load the page for that Group. To leave a Group, click the 'Leave this Group' link on the right side of the screen.
Communities of Interest allow people with common health interests to share information and communicate inside Medpedia. Anyone may create a community of interest and anyone may join.
To create a Community of Interest, log into Medpedia, go to your dashboard and click the ‘Create a Community of Interest' link on the right side of the screen. Then invite others to join your Community of Interest. Anyone may create a community of interest and anyone may join. The discussion boards are regularly reviewed by Medpedia volunteers and inappropriate content will be deleted.
To leave a Community of Interest, log in, go to your profile and select the Community of Interest you want to leave. This will load the page for that Community of Interest. Click the ‘Leave this Community of Interest' link on the right side of the screen.
Committees oversee creation of content in the wiki around their topic areas. Committees are approved and managed by Medpedia and only approved Editors can join. See above for more information.
The Upload a Document feature allows Medpedia users to upload Word files, PDFs, Excel files or Powerpoint slides to their profiles, Groups, and Communities of Interest. You can choose to make documents you upload public or private. If you make a document public, anyone visiting Medpedia can view it; if you make it private, only users you specify will be able to see it and comment on it.
Uploaded documents are not a part of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License (CC-BY-SA) license of the Medpedia wiki and the copyright is solely held by the authors of that content. Content in these uploaded documents cannot be copied, modified or redistributed without the explicit permission of the author(s).
How to Upload a Document to a ProfileClick the My Documents link on the left navigation bar. On the My Documents page click Upload a New Document and follow the prompts onscreen. The uploaded document will appear on the right side your profile. (Note: You can also upload a document to be converted to an Article by a Wikimaster. Choose this option only if you wish grant free access to the content in the document under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License and add it to the Medpedia wiki.)
How to Upload a Document to a GroupTo upload a Document to a Group, go to the Group page and click the Upload a New document link listed under Members and follow the prompts onscreen. The uploaded document will appear in the Group under a section for documents.
How to Upload a Document to a CommunityTo upload a Document to a Community of Interest, go to the Community page and click “Upload a new document” link listed under Members and follow the prompts onscreen. The uploaded document will appear in the Community under a section for documents.
To resend your verification email, go to your Account page and click "Resend verification email." If you still don't receive the email, check your spam folder to be sure it didn't land there – or add another email address to your account on the Account page.
For questions not answered here or elsewhere on the site, email here or call 800-930-9033 or send mail to the office at:
Medpedia Inc.
703 Market Street, Suite 470
San Francisco, CA 94103