The Wikipedia of medicine is in Quebec, and it’s growing fast!

Two Quebec doctors have invented the Wikipedia of medicine. Named Wikimédica, the project, which was launched in 2017, has just moved up a gear thanks to a partnership with Université Laval.

The online medical encyclopedia, which until now has grown by word-of-mouth, will now benefit from the institution’s network to increase its pool of contributors and its reach within the sphere of healthcare professionals.

The platform’s principle is simple. Like its encyclopedic model, which is well known to the general public, Wikimédica makes freely available articles synthesizing medical knowledge on as many subjects as possible, while waiting to do so on every possible subject.

To date, over 1,200 articles are available, on subjects ranging from abarognosia to ophthalmic shingles. The former, as Wikimedica explains, is the loss of the ability to detect the weight of an object held in the hand. The second is an eye disease that usually manifests itself as a painful rash.

But unlike its well-known encyclopedic model, Wikimédica is not aimed at the general public. The platform is dedicated to healthcare professionals and students.

In fact, it was the latter who prompted the creation of the platform, when its founders, Drs Michaël St-Gelais and Antoine Mercier-Linteau, were still in medical school.

“It all started with a USB key,” recounts Michaël St-Gelais. Still a medical student in Laval at the turn of the 2010s, St-Gelais recalls that, at the time, a key that was passed from hand to hand enabled them to transfer documents, course summaries and anything else that could help them pass their exams. The network was rather limited, concedes the former student, who ditched the USB key for a new approach.

“I had started by making a common Dropbox that shared this content for all the people in my class,” he recalls, amused. Then we realized that Dropboxes didn’t work very well for sharing content!”

Fortunately, Antoine Mercier-Linteau, already a computer engineer, decided to change direction and joined Laval’s Faculty of Medicine. It was he who introduced the principle of wikis to the group of students. D-systems thus gave way to a more sustainable solution.

By and for practitioners

After that, the two would-be doctors left the student aspect behind and set their sights on a professional career. “Doctors aren’t able to retain all the information. They usually have software on their phones that allows them to search for references at the bedside,” explains Dr. St-Gelais. “What Wikimédica is trying to do is exactly that: build a knowledge base in which there are summary articles intended for professionals and learners in the healthcare field that serve as a reference.”

The partnership with Laval shows, say the two creators, that their project “makes sense” and proposes content that is “respectable” enough for a university to approve it. “It gives it a certain seriousness,” they add. Despite this partnership, however, Wikimédica remains autonomous. The collaborative platform is a non-profit organization (NPO) with open-access content, just like their model.

“However, not everyone can create or edit an article. This is one of Wikimédica’s safety nets. To create an account, you need to provide a professional number, which your institution or professional association is responsible for authenticating. What’s more, each contributor is required to use his or her real name, so that comments can be attributed to him or her, and must indicate any conflicts of interest when registering. “In doing so, we are bound by the ethical obligations of our profession, for doctors,” adds Dr. Mercier-Linteau.

“Of course, while some things are black and white – since we’re talking about science here – others are also open to debate, as science is constantly evolving. In such cases, the platform’s editorial line is not to take sides, only to indicate that the element in question does not meet with consensus, and that these are the options being debated. “Wikimédica is not a place to debate this. Our aim is to help the clinician in the field who needs an answer to better care for his or her patient,” reminds Dr. Mercier-Linteau.

The terrain in question is that of the entire French-speaking world. The site’s visitor statistics reveal that of the tens of thousands of visitors per month, a third are Canadian, another third French and the final third from the rest of the French-speaking world, from North and West Africa to Belgium. In fact, the leading consumers of the platform’s content are the French, with Canadians only in second place.

The two doctors also cite users in Haiti, Cameroon and Congo. “It’s an indication of just how important Wikimédica could be for global health,” says Antoine Mercier-Linteau. Mercier-Linteau, who was a computer engineer “in another life”, also hopes that his platform will facilitate access to the latest knowledge and new standards of practice.

“Knowledge needs are just as present for a doctor working in Togo as they are for a doctor working in a French university hospital. Except that (in Togo), we send them our old medical textbooks and after that, for the rest, they have to fend for themselves.” The doctor points out that subscriptions to large databases are not necessarily very expensive for a Canadian practitioner, but for a health professional with less means, in Africa for example, the cost makes them more difficult to access.

Not to mention that “it’s in English, not French”, he adds, and not every doctor in the world is fluent in the language of Shakespeare. On the other hand, they all have access to the Internet and can therefore access Wikimédica resources, free of charge and in their language of study, and thus bring their practice into line with the latest Quebec standards. “There’s great potential to make a difference,” argue Drs. St-Gelais and Mercier-Linteau.

“Dis, Wikimédica”

The two Quebec doctors’ project is going from strength to strength. In fact, they mischievously hint that a new partnership, related to surgery, will be announced soon.

In the meantime, they are continuing to work on integrating artificial intelligence into the platform, so that users can ask Wikimédica questions in natural language, just as they can with ChatGPT.

“A doctor could ask a question by saying: ‘my patient, I have the impression that he has such and such, I’m going to give him such and such antibiotic, but he’s allergic. What do you suggest?’ Then the AI will go and rummage through Wikimedica and give him an answer,” Dr Mercier-Linteau explains proudly. The platform’s creators are still training the AI and developing its functionalities, but they venture to say that the tool could be available in a few months’ time.

For the time being, the priority remains increasing the number of items available and the speed at which they can be produced. This will require a significant number of extra white-coated volunteers. Calling all interested parties.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews