The Medpedia Project has announced the public launch of the beta version of a technology platform for the worldwide health community. Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, University of Michigan Medical School and other leading global health organisations, are contributing in various ways to Medpedia. The Medpedia Project aims to create a new model of how the world will assemble, maintain, critique and access medical knowledge. It will, over time, be a repository of up-to-date unbiased medical information, contributed and maintained by health experts around the world, and freely available to everyone.
The Medpedia Platform includes three interrelated services - a collaborative knowledge base; a Professional Network and Directory for health professionals and organizations; and Communities of Interest in which medical professionals and non-professionals can share information about conditions, treatments, lifestyle choices, etc. This free resource is available at www.medpedia.com.
The Medpedia collaborative knowledge base provides medical professionals and organisations a central place to record their knowledge and receive national and international recognition and visibility for their expertise. Since the announcement of The Medpedia Project in July 2008, over 110 organisations have contributed or pledged over 7,000 pages of content to the knowledge base, and thousands of people have become a part of the community.
The Medpedia Professional Network provides medical and health professionals a free communications and networking system, a place to organise conference attendees and speakers, a professional expertise directory, a recruiting tool for research collaborators, and a clinical referral network. Twenty five health organisations recently announced plans to use the Medpedia Network and Directory to connect with their memberships. The list includes the American Heart Association (AHA), NHS Choices (National Health Service) of the UK, the University of Michigan Medical School (UMMS), the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health, and many others.
