Representation of medical informatics in the wikipedia and its perspectives.

A wiki is a technique for collaborative development of documents on the web. The Wikipedia is a comprehensive free online encyclopaedia based on this technique which has gained increasing popularity and quality. This paper's work explored the representation of Medical Informatics in the Wikipedia by a search of specific and less specific terms used in Medical Informatics and shows the potential uses of wikis and the Wikipedia for the specialty. Test entries into the Wikipedia showed that the practical use of the so-called WikiMedia software is convenient. Yet Medical Informatics is not represented sufficiently since a number of important topics is missing. The Medical Informatics communities should consider a more systematic use of these techniques for disseminating knowledge about the specialty for the public as well as for internal and educational purposes.