Medpedia – Creating the World’s Leading Medical Information Platform
The Medpedia Project is planning to create the world’s best and most comprehensive resource about medicine, health, and the body and to make it freely available to the world. It will be launched at the end of 2008. A preview site is now available at www.medpedia.com.
Their goal is “to transform how both medical professionals and the general public acquire and understand information about health. Contributing to Medpedia gives health professionals the chance to become known around the world for their areas of expertise.”
Medpedia is created in association with Harvard Medical School, the Stanford School of Medicine, The University of Michigan Medical School, the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, and health organizations around the world.
Medpedia is intended for anyone with an interest in health, medicine and the body: For medical professionals and organizations, it’s a platform to share the most up-to-date medical knowledge. For the general public, it’s a comprehensive educational resource that provides information related to their bodies, medical questions and health needs.
Anyone who is medically knowledgeable is welcome to become a member of Medpedia’s community. The content is copyright-free or in the public domain and freely editable. Medpedia offers no monetary compensation to any organization for participation.
However, to qualify to edit or contribute to the main content, you must have an M.D. or Ph.D. in a biomedical field. So there is no room for healing practitioners or other non-academic knowers of medicineH however, I read in an article recently that more people are willing to pay more money for alternative medicine than for the classical academic kind – will the academicians cedem them their due rights?
When applying to become an editor of Medpedia to contribute content he/she has to disclose if he/she receives any beneficial contribution for expressing his views – probably to prevent the lobbying of the pharma industry, which certainly is highly interested in such a platform.
The difference to Wikipedia is that Medpedia is focused 100% on health, medicine and the body, whereas less than 2% of Wikipedia’s content is related to health and medicine.
