davidrothman.net

Jessica Berthold has written a very good, short article for ACP Internist about medical wikis for which I was interviewed in November.

The entire text of the interview is below.

What are your thoughts on the latest iteration of AskDrWiki? In the last few months, the site has taken many of your suggestions– for eg, posting an editorial policy, verifying the credentials of contributors. Does it still have flaws that need corrected?

I’m sure it does, but the use of wikis for this purpose is still a very new idea. If critics keep being vocal and if AskDrWiki’s administrators continue to constructively respond to criticism, AskDrWiki may help establish for others the best practices through which a medical wiki can be built and maintained.

What, in your opinion, is an acceptable way for a practicing physician to use AskDrWiki, and what is unacceptable? Does this apply to all medical wikis?

A physician could reasonably use AskDrWiki the same way a high school student would use Encyclopaedia Britannica (or Wikipedia)- as a starting point at which to begin research. An inadvisable use would be to stop one’s research there.

Of course, the most ideal use of AskDrWiki by a physician would be for the physician to register, read critically, and make changes where he/she sees room for improvement. The more health professionals who are keeping an eye on the content to ensure accuracy, the better.

Based on some of the criteria I’ve seen you write about, I am guessing that you would rank AskDrWiki and PubDrug at the top of the list of existing medical wikis, in terms of having reliable, trustworthy information. Is that true? Are there other medical wikis you find equally, or more, reliable?

I think that ganfyd approaches the credibility that AskDrWiki and PubDrug have earned. However, some excellent wikis really have different goals than to be “a medical Wikipedia”. The MacSurgWiki would be a good example of this.

It is easy, when discussing wikis, to mistake Wikipedia as a paradigm instead of one application of the wiki as a tool for collaborative document development.

Some of the traits you’ve named that indicate a reliable medical wiki include a detailed editorial policy, a review process for submitted information, verification of contributors’ credentials, and a clear listing of the names of editors and administrators. Are there other traits?

As a very general rule, active revisions are another good sign in a medical wiki. By looking at the recent changes page of a wiki [examples at Ganfyd and AskDrWiki] one can get an idea of how actively the wiki’s community of contributors is adding or editing content. This can indicate that the information is being kept up-to-date or that there is an active community keeping an eye on the content to ensure accuracy of the information. An unchanging wiki is not a healthy wiki.

Do you think medical Wikis will ever replace textbooks? What needs to change in order for that to happen?

In some ways, some wikis are already replacing textbooks for some purposes. I’m told by colleagues in medical school libraries that medical students frequently make use of wikis and other convenient, free online resources.

However, the larger trend here is not that wikis threaten to supplant books, but that online resources, whether free or subscription-based, threaten to supplant paper-and-ink resources.

I believe there will always be need for authoritative literature and that textbooks will never go away, but wikis and their descendent technologies will probably influence the way that online medical resources are managed and revised.

As medical wikis currently stand, what can they practically offer to a doctor that no other medium can?

Medical wikis currently contain no kinds of information that cannot also be found in other resources, online and on paper. The edge wikis have is not really in content, but in being free and convenient to use.

As a whole, what do you think of the quality of the existing crop of medical wikis?

The quality of medical wikis varies tremendously and virtually nothing can be said about them as a whole. One of the reasons I first started making notes on them individually was to highlight the fact that each wiki must be evaluated on its own merits in the same sense that any book must be examined on its own merits. It is as ridiculous to say “wikis are good” or “wikis are bad” as it would be to say that “books are good” or “books are bad.” Some books are great, others…not so much. Same for wikis.

January 12th, 2008 | Category: "Social Software", For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology, Wikis | Comments (1)

Brie Zeltner of the Cleveland Plain Dealer contacted me weeks ago because they were planning on doing a follow-up to their previous article about AskDrWiki.

Their follow-up is here.

Here’s what they say about our interview in the article:

Critics of medical wikis have praised AskDrWiki for publishing an editorial policy, making a list of its editors and their credentials available on the site, and responding promptly to constructive criticism about the site’s design.

David Rothman, a medical librarian who has warned against relying on wikis for medical information, said AskDrWiki has made great strides in the past eight months. “It certainly is a safer source of medical information than it was,” he wrote in an e-mail, adding that the site is still meant as a resource for medical professionals.

Here’s the brief interview in its entirety:

In your opinion, has the web site improved since we published our article? In what ways? Is it a safe source of medical information right now?

They’ve written and posted an editorial policy- that’s a great step. It is certainly a safer source of medical information than it was, but it is important to note that it is meant as a resource for medical professionals. Healthcare consumers looking for health information would probably be better served by visiting MedlinePlus, a site maintained by the National Library of Medicine.

Do you still have reservations about medical wikis? About this one in particular? What are its greatest assets?
I absolutely have reservations about any source of healthcare information with inadequate editorial controls. AskDrWiki has greatly improved in this regard.

Do you think a site like this can ever be as reliable as a textbook or a medical library?
It is a huge mistake to compare any single resource to a medical library. A medical textbook is probably about as reliable as its editors and policies, so with editors and policies on par with those of a textbook, there’s no reason why a medical wiki can’t be made a reliable and trustworthy source.

What do you recommend to make the site a safer and more reliable source of information?
I’ve already made all the recommendations I have to offer. If I think of any others, I’ll pester Dr. Civello with them.

Do you keep in contact with AskDrWiki’s editors about the site?
We have traded a few emails. We have a number of common interests and goals.

I also added:

Brie, you may want to note in your article that the guys at AskDrWiki must be on to something because Elsevier, one of the biggest names in medical publishing, has started their own medical wiki. I posted some details here.

This may indicate that established publishers see sites like AskDrWiki as a real threat to their business.

I’d also like add now that it is great to see that AskDrWiki has achieved 501(c)(3) (not-for-profit) status. Congratulations and wishes for continued growth to Dr. Civello, Dr. Jefferson and all others who’re working to expand and improve this project.

January 9th, 2008 | Category: "Social Software", For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology, Wikis | Comments (2)

I was asked recently in an interview:

“You’ve written quite a bit about Web 2.0 tools and medical librarianship [...snip...] Are there ways in which you see health sciences librarianship 2.0 as differing from Library 2.0?”

I answered that I’m actually not all that fond of the the “2.0″ suffix, whether it is applied to “Web,” “Library,” “Medicine” or “Health.”

This answer was lame and incomplete, something I’m not proud of. Even though I’m not entirely happy with it, maybe this one will be better.

The term “Web 2.0″ is a metaphor representing the idea that the Web is in it’s “second version”. It is not, in my view, a particularly good metaphor.

Some trends commonly associated with “Web 2.0″ are tools for collaboration (and other “social” activities), applications that live online and in your Web browser, rounded corners (and other aesthetic choices), and the blurring of the line between content consumer and content creator. The term “Web 2.0″ can be a useful shorthand with which to describe these tends and in aggregate and I’m not opposed to the idea that these trends are, taken together, significant enough to collectively merit a term referring to them. My impression is that this term is most especially useful when marketing Silicon Valley investment opportunities to potential investors.

Some other critics of the term have asserted that “Web 2.0″ as a term is meaningless. I disagree. This piece by Tim O’Reilly does a great job of explaining what he means when he says “Web 2.0.”

However:

• The Web hasn’t been upgraded. There’s no new version of the Web. The longer a medium is around, the more interesting things people figure out how to do with it. This isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) surprising. Tim Berners-Lee, the person generally credited as having invented the World Wide Web, said¹:
  

  “Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along…the idea of the Web as interaction between people is really what the Web is. That was what it was designed to be as a collaborative space where people can interact.”

• Many things that are new and cool on the Web are not “Web 2.0.” Sometimes, new and cool things are the Web are just new and cool and really don’t need a numeric versioning suffix.
• Although some might see it as semantic nit-pick, I believe that there’s no such thing as “using Web 2.0“² and that Web 2.0 doesn’t have “features”.³ “Web 2.0″ isn’t a program, a movement or a standard. It is jargon used to describe a set of trends in the sorts of things people are doing on the Web.

There’s nothing wrong with jargon in and of itself- but the term is now so widely and varyingly used that it needlessly creates more confusion among those who most need clarity. More and more, I read things about “Web 2.0″ that drive me up the wall.

And now we’ve got people talking about “Web 3.0″

There are a number of things about Dean Giustini’s recent BMJ Editorial on “Web 3.0″ with which I am unhappy.⁴

First, to continue and enhance the confusion that now comes with every use of a versioning suffix by using “3.0″ is a significant disservice. Librarians should be demystifying confusing terms and clarifying definitions. I’m disappointed that neither BMJ nor Dean decided to describe some of the the ways that evolving Web technologies may impact healthcare. Instead, the article appears impressive to people who aren’t familiar with the buzzwords (most of BMJ’s readership are not, I am guessing, professional technologists) and says almost nothing to those for whom these buzzwords are all too familiar.

Second, the entire editorial about “Web 3.0″ or “The Semantic Web” lacks a definition either term. Is the assumption that perhaps these terms are familiar to the average BMJ reader?

Now, with apologies, some fisking:

Dean writes:

“Each new version of the web should be a better iteration of its predecessor, and web 3.0 should be no exception.”

Except that there has been, as Berners-Lee points out, no new version of the Web. Part of the problem with the hype surrounding “2.0″ is that people who should know better forget that it is a metaphor.

Dean writes:

“In medicine, we should focus on the ability to locate trusted clinical information, while creating the means to produce new knowledge.”

What, because we don’t focus on these things now…?

Dean writes:

“Information retrieval in web 3.0 should be based less on keywords than on intelligent ontological frameworks, such as the National Library of Medicine’s Unified Medical Language System, Medline’s trusted MeSH vocabulary, or some other tool.”

I do not believe that we will live to see a time where the World Wide Web is thoroughly indexed and made searchable with a controlled vocabulary like MeSH. It is a poor analogy for what technologists mean when they speak of “the Semantic Web” and it is a disservice to lead librarians to think that searching the Web will eventually be like searching MEDLINE. It won’t.

Dean writes:

“The question of whether http://del.icio.us and www.connotea.org—two popular social tagging sites—will be useful in web 3.0 remains doubtful.”

This statement confused the hell out of me. Allan Cho (with whom Dean collaborated in writing this article on the Semantic Web) has said one of my favorite things on this topic:

“…use of folksonomies could help overcome some of the inherent difficulties in ontology construction, thus potentially bridging Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web. By using folksonomies’ collective categorization scheme as an initial knowledge base for constructing ontologies, the ontology author could then use the tagging distribution’s most common tags as concepts, relations, or instances. Folksonomies do not a Semantic Web make — but it’s a good start.”⁵

Nicely said, Allan.

Dean writes:

“In medicine, finding the best evidence has become increasingly difficult, even for librarians.”

I don’t think I can agree with this premise. I think that Web tools have made the best stuff increasingly easier to find for those with the skills to use the tools.

Dean continues:

“Despite its constant accessibility, Google’s search results are emblematic of an approaching crisis with information overload, and this is duplicated by Yahoo and other search engines.”

Huh? How are Google search results emblematic of information overload?

Dean continues:

“Consequently, medical librarians are leading doctors back to trusted sources, such as PubMed, Clinical Evidence, and the Cochrane Library, and even taking them to their library bookshelves instead.”

Okay, maybe- but how is this a “Web 2.0″ trend? Haven’t librarians always struggled to get their patrons to use the best tools?

Dean continues:

“Unless better channels of information are created in web 3.0, we can expect the information glut to continue.”

Dean has previously blamed “Web 2.0″ for “information overload”, now he seems to say that Google is responsible for an “information glut”. Both of these assertions are just silly.

The Web makes a whole lot of information easily available to a whole lot of people (which I see as a good, desirable thing) and many people lack the information skills to get just the stuff they want- but to assert that “Web 2.0″ or Google cause information overload (with absolutely no support) is just beyond my ability to comprehend.

Why?

Because in the hands of a skilled user, Google is a powerful tool for filtering out the chaff. Because I routinely use “Web 2.0″ tools (like RSS feeds from del.icio.us or blogs) to benefit from the readings and tags and opinions of friends and colleagues- this helps me stay focused just on the good stuff. How else would I keep on top of all the stuff this blog covers?

Okay. Enough fisking.

What about “Medicine 2.0″ and “Health 2.0″?

“Medicine 2.0″ bugs me perhaps even more than “Web 2.0″. It is a way of marketing tools that apply newish Web trends to the needs of health professionals. How does the term serve anyone but investors and those who have something to sell investors? Why the heck should healthcare professionals embrace and adopt this marketing schtick when they could instead demand terms that are clear and descriptive?

“Health 2.0″ is term for hyping the application of newish Web trends to the needs of healthcare consumers. Again, it appears to be useful in selling investment opportunities. Do the rest of of need the term? No. We can instead refer with more clarity and simplicity to Web sites and Web services for healthcare consumers.

So what about “Library 2.0″?
I think that I have come to agree with T. Scott⁶. The work is important and good, but the term is not. I urge librarians, particularly bibliobloggers, to use the term carefully (if at all). We don’t need it to describe the application of Web trends and technolgies to library work, we REALLY don’t need it in order to describe making libraries more patron-centric, and when we use it (usually failing to explain/define it) we add to the confusion and needlessly alienate potential ALLIES for improving computer literacy in libraryfolk and in patrons.

I like Wikis and blogs and RSS and APIs and mashups and portable data and rich user experiences and social networking tools and online productivity tools and social bookmarking. I’m fascinated by the new and interesting things people keep doing with the Web. I believe that librarians need to be technologists and need to know what “Web 2.0″ means- but that doesn’t mean they need to add to the existing confusion. It means they need to help smooth it away.

Jargon is fine in small groups of specialists- but information professionals, I think, have a special responsibility to help others overcome and dismiss jargon when it gets in the way of sharing information. Not only to bring the benefits of these new technologies to all our colleagues, but to all our patrons.

For that reason and to keep me sane, please: No more talk of “Web 3.0.”

In case it isn’t obvious by now: I’d like to hear your thoughts, whether you agree or disagree with mine. Leave a comment, wouldja’?

January 8th, 2008 | Category: "Library 2.0", "Social Software", Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Mashups, Online Social Networks, RSS/Feeds, Technology, Wikis | Comments (24)

I’m NOT obsessed with television just because I wrote about House MD, the writers strike, and now Scrubs. I’m not. Really.

…Oh, shut up and give me the remote.

The TV show Scrubs mentioned tonight both online rating of physicians and patients who rely on health information from Wikipedia.

Dr. Cox: So you’re declining chemo because Wikipedia says that a Raw Food diet reverses the effects of Bone Cancer…? Well, hey- any info you have that I can pass on to my other patients would just be super… and by-the-by…while you’re on your computer perhaps you could jump over to a little site called rateyourdoc.org…?

…a few minutes later…

Patient: There. I gave you five stars.

Dr. Cox: Thank you! And now, I have to take your laptop from you as I’ve deemed you just too darn stupid to use it. See, those bell peppers that you’re munching? They aren’t going to do a truckload of jack against the cancer raging inside of your body. Of course, I’ve only been a doctor for some TWENTY YEARS and the person who wrote that Wikipedia entry also authored the Battlestar Galactica Episode Guide…so what the heck do I know…? But… if you feel like living? Page me.

Hah! NBC actually made a Web site for RateYourDoc.org!

And I did get a result when I searched for a Wikipedia article on Raw Food that mentioned it as a cancer treatment. See screen capture below:

Mattering only if you share my tastes in music: The soundtrack to the episode featured a track by one of my all-time favorite bands- Jump, Little Children, most of whom I met in 1992 at NCSA. If you can, get yourself copies of the Licorice Tea Demos and Buzz. Or order The Early Years. Good guys, great music. I went to see them live every chance I had.

December 6th, 2007 | Category: Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Fun, Technology, Wikis | Comments (1)

Gaétan Kerdelhué, a medical librarian at Rouen University Hospital and author of this list of French-language medical wikis has translated entries into English so I could add them to my list. Thanks so much, Gaétan! The list of medical wikis is up to 56 entries now.

Also- Gaétan blogs here- so if you read French you’ll want to check it out. If you don’t read French, you read a version translated into English by Yahoo Pipes. Heck, you can do what I just did and subscribe to this English language version of its feed.

Below is an embedded Grazr thingamabob you can browse to preview the sort of stuff Gaétan blogs about:

November 28th, 2007 | Category: Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Medical Librarianship Blogs, RSS/Feeds, Technology, Wikis | Comments (2)

If you’re a Francophone, I’d be grateful if you’d consider helping me expand the list of medical wikis to include these French-language Wikis.

Barbara Braun kindly translated and reported on DocCheck Flexikon, a German-Language medical wiki I had wanted to add to the list. If a Francophone would be willing to provide the same sorts of details for each of the French-language medical wikis, I’d be pleased to add a link to that Francophone’s Web site to credit the work at the top of each listed French wiki.

Merci beaucoup!

November 26th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", Technology, Wikis | Comments (2)

Elsevier's new medical wiki, WiserWiki is now live and "in Beta." 

I hadn't realized until now exactly how worried publishers might be about tools like AskDrWiki and Ganfyd. I always thought that AskDrWiki or Ganfyd, if developed and maintained well, might threaten to take business away from UpToDate, DynaMed, MDConsult or other similar products- but it would appear that Elsevier sees them as a bigger threat than I have. Why else start a brand-new medical wiki and seed it with content they own from John Noble’s “Textbook of Primary Care Medicine”? In doing this, Elsevier probably hopes to gather the users that would otherwise use Ganfyd or AskDrWiki (or Wikipedia). This way, they can sell advertising and promote their own offerings. Brilliant.

Still, I think it'll bomb. Sure, people will be happy to make use of the free content that Elsevier seeded it with, but I think that Physicians inclined to contribute to a wiki will prefer to contribute to AskDrWiki or Ganfyd.

WiserWiki's Terms and Conditions say:

All content in this Site, including site layout, design, images, programs, text and other information (collectively, the “Content”) is the property of Elsevier and its affiliated companies or licensors and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may not copy, display, distribute, modify, publish, reproduce, store, transmit, create derivative works from, or sell or license all or any part of the Content, products or services obtained from this Site in any medium to anyone, except as otherwise expressly permitted under applicable law or as described in these Terms and Conditions or relevant license or subscriber agreement.

Really? Even the stuff that contributors write?

We do not claim ownership of any material that you provide to us (including feedback and suggestions) or post, upload, input or submit on or through this Site, including our blog pages, message boards, chat rooms and forums, for review by the general public or by the members of any public or private community (“Submission”) and we are not responsible for its content or accuracy.

Okay, I guess that's good…

…However, by posting, uploading, inputting, providing or submitting (“Posting”) your Submission you grant us, our affiliated companies and sublicensees permission to display, publish and otherwise use your Submission in any format in connection with the operation of our respective businesses (including, without limitation, the Site). No compensation will be paid with respect to the use of your Submission. We are under no obligation to display or otherwise use any Submission you may provide, and we may remove any Submission at any time in our sole discretion.

So…Elsevier provides the server and hosting…and physicians write the content…but Elsevier can leverage the content for profit? I think that if a physician is the sort of community-minded sharer who gives her/his time and expertise for free (hint: these are the sorts of physicians who contribute to Wikipedia or medical wikis), he/she will probably prefer to give it to a non-profit than to let Elsevier make money off of it.

 And what about this:

Q: Who holds the copyright to the information submitted on this site?
A: Contributors retain the copyright to information they contribute to WiserWiki. Please read our Terms & Conditions.

How do you simultaneously have authors retain copyright…and have documents editable by registered users? Perhaps Elsevier intends for contributors to only submit full, complete articles for consideration of inclusion…but wouldn't that defeat about half the purpose of making the site a wiki instead of a digital book?

(Added to the List of Medical Wikis)

November 14th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology, Vendors, Wikis | Comments (5)

I recently discovered a health information wiki I’d like to add to the list, but my Spanish is very, very limited.

If you’re a Spanish-speaker who would be willing to gather the necessary information from this site as Barbara Braun (a native speaker of German) did for DocCheck Flexikon, I’d be most grateful.

Information needed follows:

Self-description:
Intended Audience/Users:
Contributors:
Editors/Administrators:
Editorial Policies:

You can see examples here.

Thank you!

November 9th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", Technology, Wikis | Comments (4)

Pierre Lindenbaum has created a tool called PubMed2Wikipedia:

First, the user select a set of articles about a given subject from pubmed, the software then download, prepare and format the data for a new wikipedia page. For example it creates the ‘references’ part and suggest the Categories: from the Mesh terms. I’ve also included a dictionary which recognize some regex patterns to help create a wikipedia internal link.

You can see more and download it here.

November 3rd, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", 3rd Party PubMed/MEDLINE Tools, For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology, Wikis | Comments Off

Have you heard about Veropedia yet?

Veropedia is a collaborative effort by a group of Wikipedians to collect the best of Wikipedia’s content, clean it up, vet it, and save it for all time. These articles are stable and cannot be edited, The result is a quality stable version that can be trusted by students, teachers, and anyone else who is looking for top-notch, reliable information.

Just a few thoughts right off the top of my head:

• Can’t we tell for ourselves what articles are stable in Wikipedia….just by looking? Why do we need Veropedia editors to do this FOR us?
• In using Veropedia, we’d be trusting its (un-named) editors as expert enough to decide for themselves what should be done to properly “vet” an article and clean it up. This would be done without the transparenecy of Wikipedia.
• In what cycle will “stable,” uneditable articles be revisited for consideration of an edit/update? Time passes, things change. Saving articles as static “for all time” seems to defeat at least half the purpose of having an online, digital encyclopedia- and makes certain that the site will age poorly.

So Veropedia will lack a number of Wikipedia’s strengths, offer nothing we can’t already get from Wikipedia itself AND it’ll have advertisements?

Why on earth will people want to use it?

It seems to me that Scholarpedia and Citizendium are both better ideas that leverage many of Wikipedia’s strengths while overcoming some of its weaknesses.

October 31st, 2007 | Category: Technology, Wikis | Comments (3)

A few days ago, Berci Meskó posted at ScienceRoll more of his advocacy for Wikipedia as a credible resource for medical information. Berci argues that if Wikipedia has increased external links and increased references, it must be seen as having increased credibility.

This isn’t this first time Berci made this fallacious argument, and it isn’t the first time I’ve been really annoyed by it.

For examples, see this post (read all the comments, too) written in response to his MedScape interview (requires free registration) and this post from a little more than a week later.

It needs to be said again and I implore any healthcare bloggers (especially MedLib Bloggers) reading this to repeat it on their own blogs:

Having lots of references does NOT equal accuracy, credibility or authority.

October 21st, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology, Wikis | Comments (6)

Just stumbled across these excellent presentation slides by Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and CEO of Atlassian.

Above: Embedded presentation slides. If you’re reading this in a feed aggregator, you might need to visit the site to view them.

October 3rd, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", Technology, Wikis | Comments Off

I’ve previously mentioned socially-created dictionaries WordSource and Wiktionary, but the dictionary at Biology-Online.org is a little more interesting because it is a biology dictionary which functions on the same principles.

Since it isn’t strictly medical, I won’t be adding it to the list of medical wikis.

August 29th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology, Wikis | Comments Off

RadiologyWiki.org (previously mentioned here and here) is the topic of an article appearing in the most recent RadioGraphics:

Informatics in radiology: RadiologyWiki.org: the free radiology resource that anyone can edit.
Radiographics. 2007 Jul-Aug;27(4):1193-200.

Recent developments in online collaborative technologies such as Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) have demonstrated the potential usefulness of an online reference resource produced as the collective effort of many users. Although this type of resource has enjoyed success in the public arena, however, its value remains unproved in the academic community. RadiologyWiki (www.RadiologyWiki.org) was created to apply the technology and methods of collaborative authorship to create a dynamic online radiology educational resource. The World Wide Web site capitalizes on the core technology of Wikipedia, allowing individuals with little technical experience to easily create, categorize, and search for articles by using a standard Web browser. RadiologyWiki shows promise for applications in the field of radiology, although issues pertaining to copyright, peer review, and academic motivation must be overcome if it is to make a meaningful contribution in this context. Nevertheless, it is hoped that RadiologyWiki will develop into a free, simple, and rapid collaborative authorship tool for communication and education in radiology.

PubMed citation
Abstract

If anyone would like to send me a copy of this article, I’d love to read it. Thanks!

Before I hear about it in the comments, I’ll go ahead and mention that there are a handful of other wikis focusing on radiology, including:

• RadsWiki
• Diagnostic Radiology (WikiBooks)
• Radiopaedia

Are there any others that I need to add to the List of Medical Wikis?

August 27th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology, Wikis | Comments Off

London-based medical librarian Reinhard Wentz (previously mentioned here) and medical student Vipul Sharma have produced a a great handout to help introduce users to Wikipedia as a potential resource. The handout includes links for additional readings on background and issues such as bias, currency, reliability, and plagiarism.

I thought it was excellent and was very pleased when Reinhard agreed to have it posted here. I like that it succinctly covers all the most important points and issues in only two digestible pages.

Got feedback? Leave it here and we’ll make sure Reinhard and Vipul see it.

[Click here to download]

August 27th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", Teaching/Training, Technology, Wikis | Comments Off

Not new, but new to me:

Have an existing Web page you want to add to a Wiki, but not looking forward to re-working it into wiki markup? HTML::WikiConverter to the rescue!

Paste in some HTML or specify a URL and HTML::WikiConverter will convert the HTML to the wiki markup used by your wiki platform.

It’ll even format to whatever flavor of wiki you prefer:

August 24th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", Technology, Wikis | Comments (2)

Just added the PharmLib Wiki to the List of Medical Wikis. That’s 51 wikis to date.

Administered by bioinformatics and pharmacy librarian KT Vaughan, this nifty wiki is off to a good start. I wonder if perhaps this content and that at PubDrug might be best paired at the same online location. Because PubDrug’s Stew Brower is listed as an editor at PharmLib, I’m guessing this idea must already have been considered.

August 21st, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology, Wikis | Comments Off

Eugene Barsky gave a presentation on Monday at Vancouver Coastal Health on social software and health libraries. As always, Eugene has generously made his presentation slides available via PDF and via Slideshare (embedded below).

I have to admit how much I enjoyed slide three…

…not only because it appears as though Eugene may have read and liked this post, but because it is flattering to see one’s own name in such good company.

Thanks as always, Eugene.

July 12th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Medical Librarianship Blogs, Podcasting, RSS/Feeds, Technology, Wikis | Comments Off

Yep. The Joint Commission has a Wiki. This brings the List of Medical Wikis up to a count of 50.

WikiHealthCare is The Joint Commission’s interactive forum for health care professionals. It is designed to enable and encourage discussion and collaboration among all users for the purpose of improving health care quality. While The Joint Commission provides the forum, users of the site control its content. Please see the Disclaimer for additional details.

[snip]

In order to participate, you must Register. After you have registered, your own unique user page will be created. This page will include links to introductory materials and instructions on how to use the site (i.e., search for, create and/or edit site content). Please review the Policies and Guidelines before you create topics or edit existing topics on the site. You may also want to become familiar with the editing process by practicing in the Sandbox.

An announcement posted to the Joint Commission ListServ added:

One final note: For some users, the concept of “freely” participating on a website that is sponsored by The Joint Commission may create some anxiety. This is understandable, but be assured that your participation within this collaborative forum has NO impact upon your organization’s accreditation status. All users participate as individuals, not as representatives of their organization.

June 26th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology, Wikis | Comments Off