Scholarly Communication Issues

The medical field is once again joining the wiki world by introducing a new medical encylopedia that hopes to "set itself apart from existing medical websites." MedPedia is the brainchild of James Currier, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and is backed by prestigious medical institutions such as the Harvard Medical School and the Stanford School of Medicine. Edited by qualifed professionals in the medical field, MedPedia will contain pages for more than 30,000 known medical conditions and thousands of prescription medicines. The National Institutes of Health and the American College of Physicians have also contributed content to the project. Each page will contain all the information available on a subject as well as links between topics, updates on the latest advances, and translation tools that will make the information available in other countries. Once the site goes live, this vast amount of medical information will be available to the public. This site could be another valuable resource on medical information for medical professionals, the in depth researcher, or the casual user.
The article states that if the MedPedia project complies with the Medical Librarian's Association's quality standards for health-information websites, then the Association will recommend it to the public.

Since one has to subscribe to the Chronicle to access their articles, here are two other links to information about MedPedia. MedPedia's own website www.medpedia.com and an article in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/23/AR2008072300256.html

--Posted by Peggy Dillard