Is Wikipedia reliable when talking about health information?

According to a recent study that was published in the Journal of Oncology Practice last week (the 15th September released online in advance), the information about cancer in Wikipedia is, in general, reliable but it was difficult to understand in terms of readability (Wikipedia is written at a college level with complex information and hyperlinks that hinder its understanding).

I would like to mention that last year we also carried out a study of the information in Wikipedia about vaccines, that we presented in the European Family Medicine Conference (WONCA, Málaga, October 2010). In that study we found out that the articles in Wikipedia about vaccines were quite good but at the same time, there was a lack of information about the authors' profile of the articles (in very few cases was the author a health professional) and there were no clues to determine the country or scenario of the immunization schedules of vaccines recommended. This last point is a very important matter because each country has different schedules (there are countries such as Spain with several schedules depending on the region where the vaccine has to be applied) and therefore the recommendations may change a lot depending on where we are.

Using Wikipedia as a source of Health Information

View more presentations from Department Web Médica Acreditada, Medical Association of Barcelona

I think that we need more studies to determine the real usefulness and applications of Wikipedia as a source of health information, for instance thinking of educational and Public Health purposes. Finally, it is very interesting to know that there are several health initiatives to promote the improvement of the medical information in Wikipedia such as Wikiproject Medicine.

Medicina Basada en la Evidencia en las consultas de AP

La atención sanitaria en los centros de salud de Atención Primaria (AP) exige satisfacer unas necesidades de información entre sus profesionales, amplias, diversas y continuas, para asegurar una asistencia de calidad, así como favorecer el desarrollo de actividades docentes y de investigación.

El acceso a fuentes de información de calidad y de Medicina Basada en la Evidencia (MBE) ha de considerarse una prioridad y debe ser facilitada en los centros de salud. Un estudio que fue realizado por Alonso et al. (BMC Health Serv Res 2009; 9:80) así lo ponía de manifiesto, señalando la inaccesibilidad a las fuentes de información de calidad, falta de tiempo y la necesidad de mayores conocimientos en la evaluación crítica de las publicaciones por parte de los médicos de AP.

Desde el grupo de MBE de semFYC hemos elaborado la "Declaración sobre el acceso a las fuentes de información científica para el médico de familia" (acceso al artículo en prensa) señalando la importancia de solucionar estos problemas y de proveer acceso a recursos MBE desde los propios centros de Atención Primaria.