WikiProjectMed:Projects

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Wiki Project Med invites participation from all languages. Please feel free to add further projects related to medicine here or discussion discuss possibilities on the talk page.

Offline apps

We have launched offline apps that contain all of Wikipedia's health care, medication, anatomy, and sanitation content. They are currently avaliable in several languages for Android and Windows 10 devices:

Android

Windows 10 devices (PC, tablet, mobile, Xbox)

  • Download the WikiMed EN app from the Microsoft Store
  • For other languages, install the generic Kiwix JS UWP app and then download any WikiMed archive directly in the app (from Settings)

Other

Translation task force

Translation task force logo

The Translation Task Force is a project began on English Wikipedia in collaboration with Translators Without Borders to improve key medical articles English followed by translation. A summary of the project is as follows:

  1. Identify the most globally important health articles
  2. Improve the lead of the article on Wikipedia (a list of those ready for translation is here)
  3. Put the article in queue for translation into every other language in the world at Translators Without Borders, with emphasis on languages which do not have equivalent articles of good quality
  4. Present the most comprehensive multilingual source of health information ever compiled to the world, for free, continually as it is being created

Health organization outreach

Any organization which serves people who get information from the Internet has a stake in the quality of information on Wikipedia and related Wikimedia projects. For many demographics and for many topics, Wikipedia is the most consulted source of health information.

Health organizations who want to participate in Wikipedia projects to do health education outreach need the following:

  1. Presentations on Wikipedia and statistics of how people use Wikipedia
  2. Training materials to introduce them to aspects of Wikipedia that are of most relevance to them as new contributors. In many cases, health professionals' time is scarce and they appreciate first receiving key information on how they can contribute within their field
  3. A maintained and curated collection of scholarly literature describing the nature, scope, and quality of Wikipedia health content
  4. A point of contact for requesting conversations from members of the health community in Wikipedia on how their organization can connect with the Wikipedia community and learn to contribute content
  5. A community networking space
  6. A historical repository for collecting case studies about community experiences in developing health content on Wikipedia

Collaborations are currently being developed with the World Health Organization, Cancer Research UK, and the United States National Library of Medicine / National Institutes of Health. Efforts include issues surrounding copyright and the support of the creation of Wikipedians in Residence.

A number of presentations have been given globally regarding the significance of Wikipedia in Medicine including in Canada, the UK, India, Switzerland and Nepal.[1] A model presentation is available here under a CC BY SA license for others to use and adapt.[2]

Wikipedia - journal collaboration

WikiJournal of Medicine logo
  • One reason some academics express for not contributing to Wikipedia is that they are unable to get the recognition they require for their current professional position. A number of medical journals have agreed in principle to publishing high quality Wikipedia articles under authors' real names following formal peer review. These journals include: Open Medicine, PLoS medicine, the Journal of Medical Internet Research and Open BMJ. Further details here.
  • There are certain articles which, although published in scholarly journals, could either be readily adapted into Wikipedia articles or preferably published verbatim as Wikipedia articles if they were appropriately licensed during publication. Some work has already gone into this concept; this project supports further efforts into reforming publishing standards so as to incorporate sharable media into Wikipedia as efficiently as possible.
  • General discussion on potential collaborations are taking place with the Cochrane Collaboration as described here.
  • In parallel to broader efforts to create a, efforts are underway to build relationships with scientific/medical publishing houses resulting in the donation of free and full access to their content for active Wikipedians. Partnerships with,, and have set a precedent for such relationships to be mutually beneficial: they provide visibility to the research databases and they give select Wikipedia editors direct access to the best available academic, scholarly, and professional reliable sources. Talks are ongoing with and which have both expressed interest in joining The Wikipedia Library. Future targets include,, and.

Quality control and peer review

In Dengue fever: a Wikipedia clinical review, the English Wikipedia article for dengue fever went through traditional medical peer review for publication in a medical journal
  • One reason some academics express for not contributing to Wikipedia is that they are unable to get the recognition they require for their current professional position. A number of medical journals have agreed in principle to publishing high quality Wikipedia articles under authors' real names following formal peer review. These journals include PLoS medicine and Open BMJ. Further details. Journal of Medical Internet Research is about to publish a new online peer-reviewed journal, JMIR:Wiki Medical Reviews. See here.
  • The WikiJournal of Medicine, started in 2014, is another effort to get academic credit for contributing to Wikipedia. This in house journal is set up to provide formal peer review for Wikipedia articles and images. It has the added benefit of being broader in scope, accepting many types of articles such as case reports. While many traditional Open Access publishers chart fees of one or two thousand dollars per article this journal is free. Efforts are ongoing to get it PubMed indexed which will allow another way for Wikipedia articles after formal peer review to end up on PubMed commons and be an appropriate reference in other academic work. WikiJournal of Medicine can also accept any medical work that is
  • There are certain articles which, although published in scholarly journals, could either be readily adapted into Wikipedia articles or preferably published verbatim as Wikipedia articles if they were appropriately licensed during publication. Some work has already gone into this concept; this project supports further efforts into reforming publishing standards so as to incorporate sharable media into Wikipedia as efficiently as possible.
  • General discussion on potential collaborations are taking place with the Cochrane Collaboration as described here.
  • Parallel to broader efforts to create a, efforts are underway to build relationships with scientific/medical publishing houses resulting in the donation of free and full access to their content for active Wikipedians. Partnerships with,, and have set a precedent for such relationships to be mutually beneficial: they provide visibility to the research databases and they give select Wikipedia editors direct access to the best available academic, scholarly, and professional reliable sources. Talks are ongoing with JSTOR and Cochrane Collaboration which have both expressed interest in joining The Wikipedia Library. Future targets include UpToDate, Elsevier, and Springer.
  • Possibly improving/creating medical {Find sources} templates, or creating a live feed of recent high-quality clinical guidelines or meta analyses to article talk pages.

Campus ambassadors to medical schools

There is an existing Wikipedia outreach program which sends Wikipedia ambassadors - "campus ambassadors" - to schools to encourage students and professors to incorporate contributions to Wikipedia projects into the learning curricula. This organization facilitates participation in the campus ambassador program for those participating in health-related education projects at universities.

Wikipedia Loves (Medical) Libraries

Wikipedia Loves Libraries is the name of an outreach program which helps librarians and the Wikipedia community work together to serve the needs of communities who use library and Wikipedia resources. This organization participates in the Wikipedia Loves Libraries program by promoting events at medical and health science libraries.

Research relations

The organization will be a point of contact for researchers who want to study the health information on Wikipedia. Many organizations need advice on how they can run surveys on the extent to which the public uses health content on Wikipedia. This organization will work with the existing Research Committee to assist researchers in getting the data and community support they need to be able to manage their own Wikipedia research at their own institution.

Since there is also precedent in the medical community of supervising human subject research, this organization will also participate in existing community programs for reviewing human subject research on Wikipedia. For example, if a researcher who is not a Wikipedian seeks to recruit Wikipedians for long interviews, this organization will be mindful of and participate in discussions about minimizing harm to and promoting benefit to Wikipedians who participate in such research and the Wikipedia community in general.

Consent review

In some cases a health care provider may take a photograph or other media of a particular patient to create a learning tool for discussing a medical condition with visible symptoms. Wiki Medicine may either mediate or arranges mediation of queries about whether such content compromises patient personal identification and/or raises privacy concerns. One way that this group might do this is verify the existence of a consent to release a photograph with the photographing doctor. Wiki Medicine also provides, collects and shares guidelines for health professionals who have media to share, such as photos or x-rays. Wiki Medicine promotes patient rights and safety in media sharing.

Advocacy and policy

This organization advocates for free access to educational health material. When a political action may serve to increase access to health information through the Internet and especially through Wikimedia projects, this organization may endorse those actions in any country. More commonly, this organization publishes talking points and arguments that other organizations may use in their own activist efforts when they discuss policy with their lawmakers.

  • Promotes the idea that all health information of general interest should be made available for free online, especially through Wikimedia projects, and particularly in Wikipedias of all languages
  • Advocates that barriers to sharing health educational material should be removed whenever there are not reasons to sustain them
  • Recommends that organizations sharing health information publish using free licenses, such as those developed by Creative Commons, in order to increase public access, open access, and sharing in general
  • Invites all perspectives to contribute to the global collection of health information which everyone uses
  • Offers to facilitate access to Wikimedia data for researchers examining the workings of Wikimedia projects, its community, and its impact

Image donations

Wiki Med sends requests to organizations with non-text media content and asks them to apply Wikimedia-compatible licensing to them so that they can be used to improve the quality of health content on Wikimedia projects.

Spoken Wikipedia

We are supporting Spoken Wikipedia Team who are involved with creating spoken medical articles.

Spoken Wikipedia for Indian Languages is a Wikipedia Project undertaken by Wikipedia Club Pune to give a voice to the Indian community and to produce a knowledge domain of information related to India through audio recordings of the articles. Wikipedia seems to relatively lack articles on India, its culture, its people and about the little things that make them Indian. This project is a huge step forward in uplifting India to a global level through this platform, making it more noteworthy, better understood and effectively represented. Who better to undertake this task than the Indians themselves?

It is a fact that a majority of the Indian population belongs to the rural section of the country. What one must realize is that this chunk of the population is often ill-informed and spends a lifetime in relative ignorance about even the most basic of aspects. Every decision a citizen makes about oneself or others affects the nation as a whole at a smaller or larger scale. When the majority of people of a country belong to a section of the society that is less-privileged in terms of communicating or gaining knowledge, amongst other things; Spoken Wikipedia becomes almost a necessity.

How can we reach out to those who do not have an access to technology or the Internet? What about those who don't have basic education or don't comprehend the English language? With the development of this project, this audience shall have audio recorded articles in their mother tongues. They can reach out and hear these articles without the limitation of knowing a language that might have been a barrier earlier. Further, the people who can understand English but cannot read or write it would benefit from this project too. These are certain major advantages of Spoken Wikipedia, amongst others, the details of which can be found on the page-link provided previously.

Health is a primary concern in the agenda at present. It has become immensely important for the rural community especially, though not exclusively, to know and take the right decisions about its health. Evidently, a disease, however trivial it may seem, doesn't only affect the concerned person, but everyone around him/her as well. Epidemics can have a nationwide effect and recent occurrences of the spread of grave and severe contagious diseases should serve as an eye-opener for one and all. This issue shall be looked into and be given due importance in this project.

Ayurvedic texts

en:Ayurveda is a set of traditional medicinal practices from Indian subcontinet. These practices are recognized by a vast majority of people in India and used by people internationally.

The practices are described in some fundamental texts which are not freely available online. This project seeks to share verified versions of these texts through Wikisource and other projects.

Barnstars

Every year we collect data so that we can recognize top medical editors.