One byproduct of a pandemic is that searching to find relevant sources of biomedical information on the Web can be overwhelming. One very valuable approach to organizing information is in wiki. Since the first one (WikiWikiWeb developed by Ward Cunningham in Portland, OR in 1994), the wiki has become a popular method to host and disseminate information, the most famous example being Wikipedia.
So what’s a wiki? According to Wikipedia, a wiki is a knowledge base on which users collaboratively modify and structure content directly from a web browser.
OHSU ClinfoWiki is an implementation of a wiki devoted to biomedical informatics topics. It was created in 2005 by Dean Sittig, PhD. At the time, Dr. Sittig was faculty at DMICE, and wanted to provide clinical informaticians around the world a place to document and discuss many of the most important concepts and lessons they learned in their day to day activities.
When Dr. Sittig moved to the School of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Texas, Health Sciences Center at Houston, editorial responsibilities were assumed by Vishnu Mohan MD MBI, who is on the faculty at DMICE (and an alumnus of the DMICE certificate and masters programs). Dr. Mohan now serves as the Editor for OHSU ClinfoWiki.
OHSU ClinfoWiki provides extensive information on many topics in biomedical informatics. Currently the wiki features 1,563 content pages that have been created and edited by 1,405 users. The resource is organized under multiple sections, including technologies such as the electronic medical record (EMR), clinical decision support (CDS), computerized provider order entry (CPOE), medical devices, personal health record (PHR) etc., and applications such as methodologies, frameworks, utilization of evidence- based medicine (EBM), government and private initiatives, training and support, terminology, workflows, usability, etc.
Since its inception, OHSU ClinfoWiki has had over 30 million page views, which is impressive for a user-driven online knowledge repository in a somewhat niche domain!
Anyone can browse the Clinfowiki, but to create a new article or edit existing pages, users need to sign up for an account. Since the site was launched, users have made over 33,000 page edits, with an average of 6.69 edits per page.
If you have not done so already, please take a moment to check out OHSU ClinfoWiki and consider signing up to contribute to this growing (and popular) body of knowledge for biomedical (and clinical) informatics!
Submitted by Vishnu Mohan, MD, MBI – 5/4/20
