WikiHealthShoppe

This site would be a place where patients could get together and share experience and medical knowledge. Alternate name: WikiMedicalAdvice. Of course we'd have to be very careful to emphasize that the advice is not professional or verifyable or legally binding, etc. However it could be a great tool for people to find out what are typical treatments for specific ailments as well as demark the symptoms typical of any ailment.

I'd be willing to support this. We could have articles on different diseases taken from the pedia with the addition of how to diagnose and treat them. Also, we could have a complete database for different kinds of drugs. (Erowid and WebMD will be a huge help). As long as we cover it in disclaimers about how its a damn wiki and not to go off and follow the advice of it without referencing it somewhere else first, we should be fine, legally and morally. We could also have an article on a specific symptom (runny nose for example) and all of the diseases and ailments which cause that symptom (commmon cold, flu, hay fever, pneumonia). I'm sure that among all the WikiMedia projects there are a few MD's wou wouldn't mind contributing thier knowledge. And if I may propose a few alternate names: WikiMedic, WikiDoc, WikiMD... DryGrain 16:37, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Tricky. People could sue if the treatment goes bad, and people could sabotage it by suggesting the use of treatments that are harmful. But possibly an encyclopedia of medical treatments or knowledge would be helpful. - Mark

Thats what disclaimers are for, and people sabotaging is a hazard with any wiki. As long as we keep it clear that it's not intended to replace the advice of a doctor, we should be fine. DryGrain 16:45, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't know. Perhaps something a little more specific would be interesting. You don't want something like this to fall into the "already been done, not much demand" category like Wiktionary has unfortunately fallen into. You seem to be interested in "homeopathic"/"holistic"/"alternative" health and pharmacological subjects, maybe something more specific to those specific categories would be up your alley. It's certainly a start. Bumm13 17:02, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I think complementary and alternative medicine surely deserves it's place on this wiki, but western medicine does as well. A complete and comprehensive medical database, like what I propose this wiki become, would certainly include both. I'd rather have a large database than something small and specific. DryGrain 17:14, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, that makes sense. We'd need a far-reaching disclaimer, though -- it'd be mainly informative, methinks. Ugen64 00:39, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment, the former WikiDoc collaboration has moved to a proper WikiProject (Clinical medicine) which is to replace the "old" Wikiproject "Medical Disorders" (now defunct). There's been discussion (mainly fuelled by User:Kpjas) whether there should be separate pages with patients' information. At the moment the MD's are working on the actual medical content, and these articles generally contain some material on the way diseases are managed. It might be beneficial to extract this information into a separate wiki.
My concern is, that we'd end up being a poor man's MedLinePlus, the NIH's patient-information outlet. Most of those articles are superbly written and can hardly be improved upon. In that respect, "it has already been done", but not on a wiki but by paid professionals.
I'd wait a few months until the docs have completed some important articles before moving onto this proposal. 195.92.67.209 11:43, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

This has been done already ... :-) See the WikiMD Homepage. -- 69.171.146.13

Could this not be part of the existing medical Wikibooks, and/or part of Wikipedia? Also, I'd advice against WikiHealthShoppe, which is strictly poetic English, whereas Wikimedia projects generally stay the same internationally, or are a few letters different. Perhaps Wikihealth or Wikimed, which are closer to the suggested words Latin (and thus non-Anglocentric) roots. -- user:zanimum