Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Research proposals

Welcome to Wikipedia Medicine's Research department. This is a place to discuss research ideas to evaluate the impact / reliability of Wikipedia's medical content. Here is an overview of previous academic research on Wikipedia. To suggest further ideas join the discussion on the talk page.

EMS usage

 * A study of primary care paramedics' use of research resources.

Compare Wiki's best works
Compare a select group of WikiProject Medicine's best articles to those found in eMedicine and UpToDate. Will need a group of independent reviewers to carry this out or, at a minimum, a unbiased mechanism to do the comparison.

What effects do different sources have on students ability to answer clinical questions
Give students tests pre- and post- allowing usage of Wikipedia / eMedicine / UpToDate. Test could include Kaplan's MCAT prep or the questions found in the secret book serious. We would than look at how much each source improved the students' test scores.

What is the evidence about the impact of wikis and other collaborative writing applications to promote best practices in health care?
A scoping review has summarized the evidence to support the use of wikis and collaborative writing applications in healthcare. Although there is some experimental and quasi-experimental studies of the effectiveness and safety of collaborative writing applications (such as wikis) as educational and knowledge translation interventions, the vast majority of included studies are observational case studies about collaborative writing applications being used by health professionals and patients. More primary research is needed to find ways to address the different barriers to their use and to make these applications more useful for different stakeholders.