February 02, 2008
Medical Publisher Launches Health Wiki
Publisher Elsevier has launched a clinical health information wiki called WiserWiki. It is geared toward consumers and built on the premise that there is a lack of trust about online health care information. The basis for the wiki is Elsevier's "Textbook of Primary Care Medicine, Third Edition," by John Noble, published in 2001.
Like other wikis, it allows users to create and power a collaborative, community Web site that is populated with information contributed by community members. Thus content can only be added to or edited by board certified doctors "to ensure that the information is as trustworthy and reliable as possible," according to a statement on the WiserWiki site.
A study by Forrester in December 2007 found that 84 percent of the 7,500 surveyed consumers had researched a health topic using an online source such as a Web site, an RSS feed or an e-mail alert and that 81 percent had visited a web site, the survey also showed that overall, consumers did not trust the information they found.
The Forrester study reported that 53 percent of consumers don't trust health information blogs, 46 percent don't trust social networking sites and 34 percent don't trust wikis.
In addition to the community editing process that wiki software offers, it also gives the reader the opportunity to see who makes changes and when. In WiserWiki, consumers can view contributors' names and the changes they've made to the site. The consumer can then use that information to evaluate recent updates and validate the accuracy of the content on the site
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