The Medpedia Project: For the People, by the People (with diabetes)
I am all for online community (OC) resources for patients. To me, the best place to get information about products and medications isn’t from a sales rep, or even from my doctor, but from people who actually use them. In fact, it was the tremendous support and volume of information that I received from the OC that inspired me to start a blog. It was also my first resource when I was pump shopping and choosing a CGM system. It’s a gold mine of ‘betes info.
So, you can imagine how stoked I was to discover Medpedia, which is an online medical encyclopedia that’s for the people, by the people. It’s built just like Wikipedia, with topic forums being filled in by medical professionals, patients, and everyone in between. Of particular interest to me are the different topic communities that you can join. I’m a member of the Diabetes, Diabesity, and Type 1 Diabetes communities, which means the issues I’m most interested in are easy to find, and send me auto-updates on new info via e-mail. There’s also a blogroll organized by topic in the News & Analysis section where I’ve discovered some new D-Bloggers, and a Q&A section for each of the communities.
My favorite aspect of Medpedia though, is the slick dashboard that registered users get. It’s free to sign up, and once you’re logged in, you have a dashboard that contains updates, the latest Q&As posted, as well as your contacts and recent activity. Its like Facebook meets WebMD meets dia-blog meets my doctor’s office. Pretty sweet.
I inquired more about the ultimate goals of Medpedia with the folks runnin’ things over there, and they let me know that the objective of Medpedia is to “build the world’s most comprehensive medical encyclopedia and to provide a common gathering place for the information and people critical to health care. It is a free platform designed to serve both health professionals and the general public.”
I’m all for anything where health professional and the general public can come together – it helps us speak in unison as we work towards better health. You can join Medpedia and the Diabetes Community by clicking here and setting up a profile – or just poke around the general platform and see if you don’t learn something new. I think you will!
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Comments
http://www.ndep.nih.gov/ Thanks for a good, informative blog. You might also want to check out this Web site for the National Diabetes Education Program. Lots of good info there, too.
DiabetesCommunity
Another valuable tool you have provided. Keep up the good work.