Largest Collaborative Online Encyclopedia of Medicine and Health Unveiled

SAN FRANCISCO — The Medpedia Project announced the formation of the world's largest collaborative online encyclopedia of medicine called Medpedia. Physicians, medical schools, hospitals, health organizations and public health professionals are now volunteering to collaboratively build the most comprehensive medical clearinghouse in the world for information about health, medicine and the body. This free public site will officially launch at the end of 2008, and a preview site is available HERE.

Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health, the University of Michigan Medical School and dozens of health organizations around the world are contributing to The Medpedia Project in various ways. Many organizations will contribute seed content free of copyright restrictions. Harvard Medical School will publish content to uneditable areas that members of their faculty have created as part of a medical school wide effort. Others organizations, such as the University of Michigan Medical School will encourage members of their faculty to edit Medpedia as individuals.

Other health and medical organizations that are supporting Medpedia include the American College of Physicians (ACP), the Oxford Health Alliance (OxHA.org), the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies, (FOCIS), and the European Federation of Neurological Associations (EFNA). These groups are contributing content and promoting participation in Medpedia to their members. Medpedia is also receiving content and cooperation from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Food andl Drug Administration (FDA) and many other government research groups who are eager to have that public domain information distributed to both the general public and to healthcare professionals.

"Medpedia has the potential to become a vital tool for scientists, researchers and educators, as well as for the general public across the globe, providing easy access to the latest and best information on medicine," said Anthony L. Komaroff, professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and editor-in-chief of the Harvard Health Publications division of Harvard Medical School. "Sharing what we know, we can help each other and help ourselves."

"Making high quality, unbiased medical information freely available to everyone via a collaborative, open and constantly evolving Web site has the potential to dramatically impact both public and individual health," said Henry Lowe, Senior Associate Dean for Information Resources and Technology at Stanford University School of Medicine. "That's why we are supporting Medpedia."

Over the next few years, the growing community of editors on Medpedia will create and interlink Web pages for the more than 30,000 known diseases and conditions, the more than 10,000 drugs being prescribed each year, the thousands of medical procedures being performed and the millions of medical facilities around the world. These pages will provide insight into the latest health and medical discoveries along with photographs, video, sound, and images. The site has been designed so that everything on a subject will be simple to access. The main topic pages will be written in language the general public can easily understand, and each topic page will have with it a "Technical" page for professionals to discuss the same topic in more clinical and scientific language. Medpedia will constantly improve in real time, keeping up to date with discoveries in health and medicine.

"It's feeling inevitable that all the medical and health information will be available worldwide at no charge via an open, collaborative platform like Medpedia," said Linda Hawes Clever, MD, MACP, a clinical professor at the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) Medical School. "Medpedia will also serve as an important place for medical professionals to get credit and become known for their specialties."

"Medpedia offers an exciting vehicle to enhance discussions of medical topics through an interactive format. I believe it will facilitate transfer of medical knowledge in ways not currently available" said Joseph Martin, MD, former Dean to both the Harvard and UCSF Medical Schools. "Becoming an editor-contributor to Medpedia will provide tens of thousands of medical professionals around the world the opportunity to make a difference in improving the health of our patients."

In anticipation of its launch later in 2008, Medpedia is calling for the world's qualified MDs, biomedical research PhDs, and clinicians to go to their Web site to apply to become editors of content. Only licensed medical professionals and organizations in good standing who are screened through a rigorous internal review process will be approved to provide and edit information.

"The enthusiastic support Medpedia is receiving from all over the world tells us the time is right for this type of resource," adds high-tech legend, Mitch Kapor. Kapor serves on the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, is the Founding Chair of Mozilla Foundation, the Co-Founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Founder of the Lotus Development Corp. "The Medpedia Project is doing a great job of customizing the Wikimedia technology platform to the unique requirements of medical and health information while staying true to the proven methods of open-source, collaborative knowledge building," he said.

"In recent years, we have witnessed the benefit that a Web site like Wikipedia can have on all knowledge," said James Currier, Medpedia founder and chairman. "With ongoing experimentation and guidance from the medical community, Medpedia could provide a similar benefit to the world in the specialized area of health and medicine."

Medpedia's Board of Advisers includes Gilbert S. Omenn, MD, PhD, professor, University of Michigan Medical School; Linda Hawes Clever, MD, MACP, clinical professor, University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) Medical School; Joseph B. Martin, MD, PhD, former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University; and tech-luminary and philanthropist Mitch Kapor.

A group of distinguished individuals have provided valuable advice and guidance to Medpedia, including Henry Lowe, MD, senior associate dean for information resources and technology at Stanford University School of Medicine; John E. Swartzberg, MD, professor at University of Berkeley School of Public Health and editor of the UC Berkeley Wellness Newsletter; Anthony L. Komaroff, MD, professor at Harvard Medical School and editor in chief of Harvard Health Publications division of Harvard Medical School; and Robert Lash, MD, Associate professor, department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School and School of Public Health.

Physicians and organizations have begun to contribute content to Medpedia and the site will be available to the general public at the end of 2008.

Source: The Medpedia Project