Ask Dr Wiki Receives Not For Profit Status!

It has been close to a year since we started AskDrWiki.com. One of our initial objectives was to obtain 501(c)(3) status from the IRS. After filling out what seems like thousands of forms we received our letter from the IRS this week approving us as a non profit company. I hope that this will help increase collaboration and contributions by removing the perception of a financial interest and allow us to continue on our mission of creating a free online source of up to date medical information.

Another Lesson Physicians Can Learn from their Kindergarden Teachers

Free Online Wiki could Save Schools Billions
An article in the USA Today by Greg Toppo, describes how Free-Reading.net, a wiki reading program for kindergartners and first graders may make big, bulky - and expensive - textbooks go the way of the film strip. The wiki which allows teachers to post their own lessons, comments and modifications has been approved by a textbook adoption committee in Florida and is awaiting approval by the state’s incoming education commissioner.

Since Florida is one of the five textbook markets in the USA, its move could lead to the development of other free materials that might someday challenge the dominance of a handful of big education publishers. Schools spend $4.4 billion for textbooks in the 2006-2007 school year, so the prospect of free state approved materials could have profound influence on how schools spend money.

Can healthcare providers learn a lesson from our Kindergarden teachers using Free-Reading? We hope so! If the medical information that is published on a medical wiki is free and high quality it will be hard to ignore.

The Cost of Medical Information....Priceless

Cost of 5 new textbooks............................................ $750
Cost of First Year Subscription to Up to Date....... $495

Having all of your Medical Information Stored on a Medical Wiki for Free.....PRICELESS


Medical textbooks and subscription based medical websites, such as Up To Date consume an enormous amount of dollars from physicians, nurses and medical students yearly. I recently purchased several textbooks with a average purchase price of $155 per text book and it is not unusual to find some medical textbooks to be priced in the $200- 300 range. Since my medical training started I have noticed a creep in the cost of textbooks which are likely due to more graphics, color photos, and bundling of books with a CD-ROM, but should we expect medical students, nurses, and residents to continue to pay these prices on little to no salary?

For the residents and students who have a library who will pay the cost of a site license for subscription based site, such as Up to Date, they are a great source of information. For users who work in smaller hospitals or clinics the price of $495 for an individual subscription to these services can be prohibitive.

A wiki, on the other hand with 500 GB of storage cost less than $100 a year. This amount of storage would equal 51 million pages in a medical text book. That is a lot of information and could be a potential huge savings for medical professionals.

Are Physicians Starting To Wiki a Diagnosis?

The BMJ article on Googling for a diagnosis published last year brought attention to the use of the internet to help make the correct diagnosis. We have also noticed a trend that we have seen on AskDrWiki, which is use of the word "wiki" that accompanies a medical search query. We have had over 1400 queries this year in which a medical term was linked with the word wiki.

Such as "cardiac index wiki", "empiric trial wiki", "amyloidosis wiki", or "captopril wiki". Clearly medical students, nurses, and physicians are not only Googling for a diagnosis but they are also directing their search toward a wiki.

We hope that we can help make another tool for the physicians bag that can help diagnose difficult cases.

AskDrWiki and RadsWiki Collaborate

We are very excited about our new collaboration with Radswiki. One of the most powerful features of a wiki comes from the ability to wiki link to other articles in the wiki. With the growing list of medical wikis this benefit may be lost. We hope that we can continue to collaborate with other wikis and build a true quality multi specialty medical wiki. We recognize the need for subspecialty wikis, like Radswiki, just as there are subspecialty text books, but we hope that other subspecialty wikis will also work with us to establish an integrated medical wiki.

Wikis in Plain English

Thanks to Common Craft Show for posting a Wikis in Plain English Video. Sometimes it is hard to explain to someone exactly what a wiki is and how it works. They did a nice job.

Editorial Policy Published

Our editorial policy will now be published on AskDrWiki and is included below. If anyone has any comments, suggestions, or ways we can improve the policy please let us know. Thanks to David Rothman for initially suggesting that we include this on the site.

Purpose
AskDrWiki.com is a website designed to provide health information for physicians, nurses, and medical students. The aim of of the site is to provide a source of reliable medical information that is easy to access on the internet. The information published on the site is not meant to supersede medical training but to serve as a repository of medical review articles to give medical professionals an online repository where they can review medical topics.

User Credentialing
AskDrWiki users must be credentialed based on their medical training before they are allowed to publish. All new users will be required to submit their medical training, degree, and current hospital or medical school. All credentialed users will be listed on the editorial board and are encouraged to publish their resume or curriculum vitae stating their education, medical training, board certification, and research. This process will remove the transparency of anonymous article creation and provide an extra level or credibility.

Article Submission

1. All articles will be submitted by credentialed medical professionals.
2. To qualify for publication material must be clearly presented and referenced with peer reviewed literature.
3. If medical topics written about are not referenced and are based on anyone's individual or anecdotal experience (The Art of Medicine) they should be designated as such.
4. Controversial topics may be presented, but they should be identified as such and every effort must be made by the editor to ensure that a balanced view of each controversy is represented based on referenced literature.

Article Review

1. Once articles are submitted they will be reviewed by specialty editors and can be added or edited by the AskDrWiki community.
2. Notification of new or changes in articles will be made through RSS Feeds.
3. Using Wiki technology users can scrutinize the content and add or edit the article. If there is a disagreement in the article efforts to come to a consensus will be made on the discussion page which is an inherent part of the wiki process.

Original Research
Any original research published on AskDrWiki is subject to peer review and open commentary from the AskDrWiki community. Edits and comments can be seen on the edits and history page. A conflict of interest statement must also accompany the article. Each original research contribution will be labeled as original research on the page.

Copyrights
AskDrWiki is a free site licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons license. Work that infringes on copyrights will not be allowed.

Sponsorship/ Conflict Of Interest

1. AskDrWiki is a non profit website funded by the Open Access Medical Informatics Group (501c3 status pending).
2. It has no financial agenda or purpose to refer patients to particular medical centers or providers.
3. The content is determined by its users and at no time is there any influence by advertising.
4. Editors do not receive compensation for content they have written.
5. The site is supported by donations and does not allow banner ads or pay per click advertising.

Disclaimers
All opinions expressed on AskDrWiki are those of their authors and not of their employers. Information provided here is for medical education only. It is not intended as and does not substitute for medical advice. If you are a patient, please see your doctor for evaluation of your individual case. Under no circumstances will the authors be liable to you for any direct or indirect damages arising in connection with use of this web site. Patient data published on this web site is modified and information from several cases may be compiled into one posting for teaching purposes and to protect patient confidentiality. Cases course and description do not follow real cases. The appearance of external hyperlinks to other web sites does not constitute endorsement. We do not verify, endorse, or take responsibility for the accuracy, currency, completeness or quality of the content contained in these sites. All clinical cases on this website are published in strict compliance with HIPAA. Report any violations to doctorwiki@gmail.com