Usemed, Arild Faxvaags weblog on healthcare computing » CSCW

Scope, Completeness, and Accuracy of Drug Information in Wikipedia

arildf — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:10:38 +0000

According to this report, information on pharmaceutical drugs on wikipedia is incomplete and much more likely to contain errors of omission compared with the Medscape Drug Reference (MDR). Using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifampicin as an example of a Google search result, the authors have compared Wikipedia entries with those of MDR, a “freely accessible general drug information databasethat had been previously evaluated and found to be broad inboth scope and depth of drug information that was gathered from authoritativereferences”. Paradoxically, information on Rifampicin at MDR appear to be unaccessible. Only after having found out that Rifampicin’s trade name is IsonaRif I am able to retrieve some of the the data. Wikipedia may be inferior to MDR with regard to to completeless and acuracy but fares much better when it comes to availability, transparency of the editing process, the use of citations, openess and the extent of linking to other relevant information resources. The collaborative editing of wikipedia entries is an example of distributed human computation. Medicine should start exploring it’s potential rather than warning of its possible side effects.

Report from the Reconfiguring healthcare workshop at ECSCW2005

arildf — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 22:24:05 +0000

We presented the COPIM project (COllaborative personal Information Management) at a workshop dedicated to CSCW in healthcare. Apart from Aksel, Terje and me, those who attended were Ellen Balka , Ina Wagner , Gianni Jacuzzi, Victoria Carlsson , Marike Hettinga , Finn Kensing , Nis Johanssen and Jos Aarts. We got to present our project and had a very good discussion.

ECSCW 2005

arildf — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 22:19:08 +0000

Title: ECSCW 2005

Abstract: I have arrived in Paris to attend the ECSCW conference. We are presenting a paper at a workshop tomorrow: “Reconfiguring healthcare:Issues in Computer Supporter Collaborative Work in Healthcare Environments “.

Body: More info will follow after the workshop.