In the Netherlands, as a reason for stimulating what they refer to as e-Health, the Government ran a study among patients of various types and found that an overwhelming majority Google the diagnosis given them by their doctors. Since we know Wikipedia is favored by Google, obviously that means a lot of Wikipedia hits, but Wikipedia was also named in the report. This was seen as being of some concern, since lots of effort and public spending goes towards dissemination of information about drugs and conditions via specialist websites in the Netherlands.
I believe the reason Wikipedia is so popular is because of the "redirect" facility that enables all names for a condition or its treatment to point the user at the same article.
That said, most Wikipedia articles linked to some version of the World Health Organization's ICD-10 codes list will point to the proper websites that countries have decided gives the best information. Strangely, for the Netherlands Wikipedia, these links often lead to Belgian websites, but it's all for the common good.
As a "source" Wikipedia is usually lacking, but as a secondary search mechanism it wins hands-down from all of the other government-based efforts (such as hospital-portal websites).
Seeing it this way, you could make a case that "Wikipedia has become the single most popular Go-To resource for health information in the world." Jane
2013/10/4, Toby Negrin tnegrin@wikimedia.org:
I'm going to catch up with Matthew later today and ask how the foundation/community have framed these kinds of issues before. I agree with Lodewijk's clarification but if there's a canonical way we've addressed these things in the past, we should consider it.
-Toby
On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 8:06 AM, Dan Andreescu dandreescu@wikimedia.orgwrote:
Hi Lane,
I think it would be perhaps be good to differentiate as 'the source' and 'a source'. I sincerely hope that people around the world only use Wikipedia as *a* source for health information. The current wording is a bit fuzzy about this. We can probably confirm that it is popular as a source, but we don't know for sure if that is to get an initial idea what words mean, as some kind of elaborate dictionary, for background information, for access to the reference section etc.
Also, the last sentence assumes that the online sources are the biggest chunk of sources for medical information. Maybe it's a lame argument, but I'd suggest that the doctor (general practisioner) or even family is still the single most popular source for health information in the world. The word 'source' is a bit too vague to use in this context. Maybe resource or compendium makes more sense?
Best, Lodewijk
+1 to this line of clarification
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