Medical error listed in Wikipedia

Wikipedia has recently created an entry on medical error.

For those of you that have never visited Wikipedia it's worth the look. Wikipedia's definition of itself is it "is a multilingual Web-based free-content encyclopedia. It exists as a wiki, a website that allows visitors to edit its content; the word Wikipedia itself is a portmanteau of wiki and encyclopedia. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing articles to be changed by anyone with access to the website."

So my disclimer for anything that you read on a Wiki is to recognise that it may not be authoritative, and is subject to change by anyone at anytime.

What is cool about it though is that it is the future of collaboration and communication. Many organisations and people are investigating the use of wikis as a means of communication. "Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and subtle effects on Wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users. ... The first ever wiki site was created for the Portland Pattern Repository in 1995." (http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki).

Here are some other examples:

• wikinews
• readerwiki
• Clincial Informatics Wiki
• in healthcare - Quality through Knowledge
• in healthcare -The RHIO wiki

And I am sure there are many more out there.

And finally word of warning about using and trusting what is written in Wikipedia.
Professor raises Wikipedia awareness