Doctors create online encyclopedia

Its name sounds like the ubiquitous Wikipedia. But Medpedia.com is so much more, advocates say.

The site was launched last month by The Medpedia Project, a worldwide collaboration of the medical schools of Harvard, Stanford and the University of Michigan; the Berkeley School of Public Health; organizations such as the American Heart Association; and others to serve as an online encyclopedia of medical information.

But unlike Wikipedia, only doctors and those with a doctorate in biomedical science are allowed to edit content, said Medpedia Project Chairman James Currier, whose San Francisco-based Ooga Labs is helping develop the platform.

"Because there are going to be lots of people who are going to say all kinds of crazy stuff," he said. "We want to make sure there is a gating factor to make sure that kind of stuff doesn't get up on the site."

One of those editors is Erick Messias, the associate director of the psychiatry residency training program at the Medical College of Georgia.

"We need some sort of forum for health information, where people can get reliable information," he said.

Dr. Messias is the editor for pages on schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorder. In addition to the clinical page, Medpedia includes a "Plain English" page for patients and those who don't want the scientific jargon.

But the site also aims to create an online community for physicians and scientists to exchange information and network.

"Nationally, people have been talking a lot about, 'What is the Facebook for doctors?' " Dr. Messias said. "And I think we need one. Medpedia is trying to become that, too."

It might address the problem of how slowly medical information is distributed, Dr. Messias said. It can take a year, for instance, to get a journal article published, he said. But Medpedia might provide a quicker dissemination of information.

"The idea is that I can go in there and talk to my colleagues about a question I had about a specific medication or an experience I had with two medications that reacted this way, and I had never seen it before," he said.

It is the idea of using the "distributed network" approach, where thousands of users contributing a little bit become much more effective and do more than a single "top-down" contributor, Mr. Currier said.

"The sum of the little bits is much, much greater than the little parts that were contributed," he said. "We believe that is a very powerful approach and a very powerful tool to make an impact on anything that is information-related, and most things are."

It will also allow professionals to form committees and link up in different networks, he said. Patients can join communities of interest around topics and through different health organizations.

Unlike other Internet start-ups, the Medpedia Project is a five- to 10-year development that Mr. Currier hopes over time will take advantage of the power of thousands of knowledgeable users.

He believes that approach "will eventually produce the most accurate, most valuable medical information resource in the world.

"It may be on Medpedia.com, or it may be someplace else. But there is no doubt that this will happen, and it will happen in the next 15 years. It's just now likely it will happen at Medpedia.com simply because of the name, because of the people involved and because we were first to get there."

And whatever it is called, Mr. Currier believes it will also become universally known.

"I think 20 years from now, we are all going to look back, and there is going to be such a resource somewhere," he said. "And we're going to say, 'Wow, how did we live without it?' "

Reach Tom Corwin at (706) 823-3213 or tom.corwin@augustachronicle.com.