GLOBAL: Cyberspace abuzz over Medpedia

Cyberspace is buzzing with news of Medpedia, a global collaboration wikipedia-type project that will offer a massive amount of up-to-date medical and health information for free to anyone with an internet connection, reports Medical News Today. Among the groups that have already agreed to provide information to the initiative described as the "world's largest collaborative online encyclopaedia of medicine" are Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health and the University of Michigan Medical School.

Medpedia's information will be sourced from doctors, medical schools, hospitals, health organisations and all kinds of health professionals who have signed up as volunteers to build "the most comprehensive medical clearinghouse in the world for information about health, medicine and the body", said Medpedia in a press statement. The site - www.medpedia.com - which will be free to use, is due to launch at the end of 2008.

Some of the contributions will be in the form of 'seed content' that is free of copyright restrictions (the idea is that the seed content grows as more volunteers add their knowledge, rather like wikipedia). Other contributions will be more restricted. For example, Harvard Medical School will be publishing content in areas that cannot be edited, so parts of Medpedia will be more like a conventional encyclopaedia.
Full report in Medical News Today