Ganfyd

Last updated

Ganfyd
Type of site
Wiki
Available inEnglish
URL ganfyd.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationRequired
LaunchedNovember 2005;18 years ago (2005-11)
Current statusDefunct (still selectively accessible)

Ganfyd was a medical wiki and online medical wiki encyclopedia, created in November 2005 by a group of doctors and medical students working in the United Kingdom. [1] The site has been the subject of academic exposition into emerging methods of disseminating medical information and more specifically, the restricting of editors within an open collaborative wiki environment. [2] [3] [4] This model has subsequently been copied by other medical wikis, but some attempts to improve on the model, such as Medpedia have failed. In 2010, Paula Younger noted it as a laudable attempt to make medical information freely accessible and authoritative. [5]

Contents

The Wiki went offline early in 2019 but is available as a selective article read only version as of 2023.

Authorship

Only registered medical practitioners or persons working under their direction, and a small number of invited non-medical specialists, could edit ganfyd articles, and its license specifically prohibited editing by people who are not registered medical practitioners, but permitted reproduction and distribution. The intention is to make the articles reliable enough for professional medical use. An audit trail was publicly available for each article. Registration was by a variety of mechanisms, including a GMC Certificate or equivalent. [6]

History

Ganfyd was intended to become a large online textbook of human medicine. By October 2010 there were over 2,000 page hits a day and it had reached 7,000 topic pages with over double that number of pages including stubs and redirects and 449 editors from six countries (United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, United States). As of 2016 it had over 10,000 topic pages. [7]

In December 2006, the Ganfyd site was noted as a specific example of a wiki being used as a low cost alternative to commercial point of care tools like UpToDate with the search portal Trip already indexing it. This may be the first example of a medical wiki being indexed by an independent medical search engine. [8]

In 2011 Ganfyd wiki was compared to Wikipedia, and described as a wiki written by the doctors for the doctors, unlike Wikipedia, which is targeted to a broader audience. [9]

This Medical Wiki went offline on 27 March 2019 due to an unrecoverable server issue. Although backups existed, in the context of the rebuild necessary to maintain high quality web content for a similar period of time to the initial build given the success of the site in terms of web hits, it was decided to suspend operations and return operating expenses donations. In the context of the later COVID-19 pandemic a former editor still involved in accurate health care information dissemination noted that "it would have been quite impossible personally to maintain both effective editorial oversight of GANFYD during this evolving crisis and the more important for NHS patients dissemination of accurate and timely information through official NHS channels" . GANFYD has apparently commenced the process of resurfacing as an historical archive as of November 2022. Its content with regard to SARS and MERS for example is believed to represent good evidence of the key knowledge decision makers in democracies should have considered in their public health and health care resilience plans. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] Its comments on vaccination were disregarded or distorted by some anti vaccination groups to their ends. [15] The failure of politicians to understand or promote such understanding of the evidence based whole system changes needed to mitigate a post pandemic winter pressure or nursing resource issue as such changes would not deliver on short term goals could be noted. [16] [17] [18] might have similar resonance to some.

Meaning

"Ganfyd" is an acronym meaning "Get a note from your doctor." [19] This phrase is known to be used by employers, insurance underwriters, and sports instructors to their respective employees/clients. In some cases, this may be intended to absolve the employer/instructor from liability in the event that the client suffers physical harm.

Some medical practitioners regard this as a cynical use of their time and skill, thus they use the term "ganfyd" pejoratively.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chiropractic</span> Form of pseudoscientific alternative medicine

Chiropractic is a form of alternative medicine concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mechanical disorders of the musculoskeletal system, especially of the spine. It has esoteric origins and is based on several pseudoscientific ideas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wiki</span> Type of website that visitors can edit

A wiki is a form of online hypertext publication that is collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naturopathy</span> Form of alternative medicine

Naturopathy, or naturopathic medicine, is a form of alternative medicine. A wide array of practices branded as "natural", "non-invasive", or promoting "self-healing" are employed by its practitioners, who are known as naturopaths. Difficult to generalize, these treatments range from the pseudoscientific and thoroughly discredited, like homeopathy, to the widely accepted, like certain forms of psychotherapy. The ideology and methods of naturopathy are based on vitalism and folk medicine rather than evidence-based medicine, although practitioners may use techniques supported by evidence. The ethics of naturopathy have been called into question by medical professionals and its practice has been characterized as quackery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MMR vaccine</span> Any of several combined vaccines against measles, mumps, and rubella

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cochrane (organisation)</span> British nonprofit for reviews of medical research (formed 1993)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quackwatch</span> American alternative medicine watchdog website

Quackwatch is a United States-based website, self-described as a "network of people" founded by Stephen Barrett, which aims to "combat health-related frauds, myths, fads, fallacies, and misconduct" and to focus on "quackery-related information that is difficult or impossible to get elsewhere". Since 1996 it has operated the alternative medicine watchdog website quackwatch.org, which advises the public on unproven or ineffective alternative medical remedies. The site contains articles and other information criticizing many forms of alternative medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vaccine hesitancy</span> Reluctance or refusal to be vaccinated or have ones children vaccinated

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friends of Science in Medicine</span> Australian association which supports science-based medicine

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Heilman</span> Emergency physician and Wikipedia editor

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Felicity Goodyear-Smith</span> New Zealand medical doctor, academic and public health advocate

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Misinformation related to immunization and the use of vaccines circulates in mass media and social media in spite of the fact that there is no serious hesitancy or debate within mainstream medical and scientific circles about the benefits of vaccination. Unsubstantiated safety concerns related to vaccines are often presented on the internet as being scientific information. A large proportion of internet sources on the topic are mostly inaccurate which can lead people searching for information to form misconceptions relating to vaccines.

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References

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  3. McLean, Rick; Richards, Brian H; Wardman, Janet I (6 August 2007). "The effect of Web 2.0 on the future of medical practice and education: Darwikinian evolution or folksonomic revolution?". Medical Journal of Australia. 187 (3): 174–7. doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2007.tb01180.x. PMID   17680746. S2CID   320469.
  4. Barsky, Eugene; Giustini, Dean (2007). "Introducing Web 2.0: wikis for health librarians". Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association. 28 (4): 147–150. doi: 10.5596/c07-036 . hdl: 2429/497 .
  5. Younger, Paula (2010). "Beyond Wikipedia: how good a reference source are medical wikis?". Reference Reviews. 24 (1): 7–9. doi:10.1108/09504121011019899.
  6. "WayBack Machine:Ganfyd.org:Help:Contribute". Archived from the original on 6 June 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  7. "WayBack Machine:Ganfyd.org:Statistics". Archived from the original on 5 July 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  8. Dean Giustini, British Medical Journal , "How Web 2.0 is Changing Medicine"
  9. Jenkinson, M. L. (16 August 2011). "Audience issues were not considered in editorial on WikiProject Medicine". BMJ. 343 (aug16 2): d5233. doi:10.1136/bmj.d5233. ISSN   0959-8138. PMID   21846708. S2CID   41741296.
  10. "WayBack Machine:Ganfyd.org:Disaster planning". Archived from the original on 26 June 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  11. "WayBack Machine:Ganfyd.org:Medical ethics in an epidemic or pandemic". Archived from the original on 19 July 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  12. "WayBack Machine:Ganfyd:Outbreaks of infectious disease". Archived from the original on 16 July 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  13. "WayBack Machine:Ganfyd.org:Severe acute respiratory syndrome". Archived from the original on 13 July 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  14. "WayBack Machine:Ganfyd.org:Mitigation strategy". Archived from the original on 26 June 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  15. "Ganfyd:Vaccination" . Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  16. "Ganfyd:Winter crisis" . Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  17. "Ganfyd:Weekend morbidity and mortality experiments" . Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  18. "WayBack Machine:Image on Ganfyd:Weekend morbidity and mortality experiments". Archived from the original on 6 December 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  19. Thoeny, Peter; Woods, Dan (2007). Wikis for dummies . New York: Wiley. pp.  68. ISBN   978-0-470-04399-8.