Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

My healthcare marketing guru is Ellen Hoenig-Carlson. I recently taught her how to blog, and am now learning new things from her every week about the state of pharma marketing, healthcare marketing, and what I call “health 2.0″ which is an area of bliss (and great frustration) for me.

Ellen recently posted that Medpedia came online this week, and I’m hopeful it’ll get early traction and begin to show up at the top of search - well above the Wikipedia entries on health.

Why? Because unlike Wikipedia, it’s got requirements around who can edit posts.

Ellen observed:

“Unlike most social encyclopedias, Medipedia has limitations on submission. Only trained professionals will be able to write and edit pages on the Website, and all contributors will have individual author pages detailing their qualifications and backgrounds.

Medpedia was developed in association with some high powered organizations:

• Harvard Medical School
• Stanford School of Medicine
• University of California Berkeley School of Public Health
• University of Michigan Medical School”

I popped over to the site and created an account, happy to see the sign up process is inclusive (my formatting edits):

“The mission of Medpedia is to openly share and advance medical knowledge. Anyone with an interest in participating in that mission is welcome to create a profile on Medpedia, including both medical professionals and consumers….

• If you are a physician or PhD in a biomedical field you will be granted direct editing privileges to the knowledge base.
• If you are a medical professional, but not a physician, your profile will qualify you to join the professional network and allow you to “Suggest Changes” to the medical knowledge base.
• If you are a consumer, creating a profile on Medpedia will allow you to “Suggest Changes” to the medical knowledge base, join Communities of Interest, and follow topics of Interest.”

In her post, Ellen wondered what would happen to the WebMDs of the world as a result?

I really hope that they continue to thrive as information resources, as I know WebMD content is reviewed by medical and nutrition professionals. But I will be going to Medpedia for my health information quests first, because it is creating a community around healthcare, and the other sites devoted to it seem to be more interested in talking to, not (potentially) learning from, their members.

I’d be interested in others’ opinions… whom do you trust for your online medical information?