Health information on Wikipedia
The Wikipedia online encyclopedia has, since the late 2000s, served as a popular source for health information for both laypersons and, in many cases, health care practitioners. Health-related articles on Wikipedia are popularly accessed as results from search engines, which frequently deliver links to Wikipedia articles. Independent assessments have been made of the number and demographics of people who seek health information on Wikipedia, the scope of health information on Wikipedia, and the quality and reliability of the information on Wikipedia.
The English Wikipedia was estimated in 2014 to hold around 25,000 articles on health-related topics. Across Wikipedia encyclopedias in all languages there were 155,000 health articles using 950,000 citations to sources and which collectively received 4.8 billion pageviews in 2013. This amount of traffic makes Wikipedia one of the most consulted health resources in the world, or perhaps the most consulted resource. A 2024 quantitative content analysis determined that "a sample of popular Wikipedia health-related articles for both sexes had comparable quality."
Amount of health content
As of the end of 2013, the English Wikipedia had 29,072 medical articles, while across all language versions of Wikipedia, there were 155,805 medical articles.As of March 2017, the English Wikipedia had 30,000 medical articles, while there were 164,000 medical articles in other languages.
As of 2017, there were about 6,000 anatomy articles on the English Wikipedia; these are not classified as "medical articles" in Wikipedia's categorization scheme and thus are not included in the 30,000 figure above.
Academic studies
Accuracy and usefulness
A 2007 study examined a sample of Wikipedia pages about the most frequently performed surgical procedures in the United States, and found that 85.7% of them were appropriate for patients and that these articles had "a remarkably high level of internal validity". However, the same study also raised concerns about Wikipedia's completeness, noting that only 62.9% of the articles examined were free of "critical omissions".A 2008 study reported that drug information on Wikipedia "has a more narrow scope, is less complete, and has more errors of omission" than did such information on the traditionally edited online database Medscape Drug Reference. A 2010 study found that Wikipedia's article on osteosarcoma was of decent quality, but that the National Cancer Institute 's page was better. The authors concluded that Wikipedia should include external links to higher-quality sources.
A 2011 assessment of 50 medical articles on Wikipedia found that 56% of the references cited on these pages could be considered reputable, and that each entry contained 29 reputable sources on average. A 2011 study examined Wikipedia pages about five statins, and concluded that these pages did not contain incorrect or misleading information, but that they were often missing information about drug interactions and contraindications to use. Another 2011 study examining Wikipedia articles on the 20 most widely prescribed drugs found that seven of these articles did not have any references, and concluded that "Wikipedia does not provide consistently accurate, complete, and referenced medication information."
An assessment of Wikipedia articles in 2012 on dietary supplements found that Wikipedia articles were "frequently incomplete, of variable quality, and sometimes inconsistent with reputable sources of information on these products."
A 2013 scoping review published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research summarized the existing evidence about the use of wikis, Wikipedia and other collaborative writing applications in health care and found that the available research publications were observational reports rather than the primary research studies which would be necessary to begin drawing conclusions.
A 2014 study that examined 97 Wikipedia articles about complementary and alternative medicine found that 4% of them had attained "Good article" status, and that CAM articles on Wikipedia tended to be significantly shorter than those about conventional therapies.
In May 2014, The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association published an article which concluded that "Most Wikipedia articles for the 10 costliest conditions in the United States contain errors compared with standard peer-reviewed sources." Following this paper, many other media sources reported that readers should not trust Wikipedia for medical information. Some of Wikipedia's prominent health content contributors defended Wikipedia and criticized the study, noting that "Wikipedia is not about truth, but about verifiability." That is, the Wikipedians contended that since the mission of Wikipedia is to reflect what mainstream sources say about any given topic, Wikipedia will be just as inaccurate as those sources. Since Wikipedia's policy is to state these inaccuracies that exist in its sources as though they were true, Wikipedians feel that pointing out how inaccurate Wikipedia's health articles are completely misses the point of Wikipedia, since "Wikipedia is not about truth, but about verifiability." Wikipedians also noted that the small sample size may have skewed results and that the study may have understated Wikipedia's level of inaccuracy by not accounting for the important information that Wikipedia articles leave out.
A 2014 study found that when the FDA issues new safety warnings about drugs, in 41% of cases reviewed Wikipedia articles about those drugs were updated to give the new safety information within two weeks. Another 23% of Wikipedia drug articles were updated to give this information within an average of about 40 days, but 36% of articles are not updated with this information within a year. A 2014 comparison between selected drug information from pharmacology textbooks and comparable information on the English-language and German-language Wikipedias found that the accuracy of the drug information on Wikipedia was 99.7%, while the completeness of this information was estimated at 83.8%. It concluded that the drug information in Wikipedia covers most of what is essential for undergraduate pharmacology studies and that it is accurate.
A 2015 study comparing the coverage of the autism-vaccine controversy on several websites found that Wikipedia's articles were broadly pro-vaccine. The study attributed this pro-vaccine stance to "this highly controversial topic attracting committed editors who strictly enforce the requirements for academic references." A 2016 study found that drug information on Wikipedia was less accurate and complete than that on the medical reference site Micromedex. A 2017 study compared the accuracy of Wikipedia articles about the 33 most popular medications with medication guides to the accuracy of their medication guides. The study found that the Wikipedia articles were generally less accurate than were the corresponding medication guides.
A 2024 study comparing the Chinese Baidu Baike and the English Wikipedia on irritable bowel syndrome found that Wikipedia "provides more reliable, higher quality, and more objective" information but noted both are still lacking in quality.
Readability
In 2012, Wikipedia's articles on depression and schizophrenia were compared to coverage in Encyclopædia Britannica and a psychiatry textbook and evaluated for their accuracy, up-to-dateness, breadth of coverage, referencing, and readability. Wikipedia was ranked highly across all categories except for readability.A 2013 review of nephrology content on Wikipedia found it to be "a comprehensive and fairly reliable medical resource for nephrology patients that is written at a college reading level".
A 2014 study found that Wikipedia's article on Parkinson's disease had a Flesch reading ease score of 30.31, meaning that it was difficult to read.
The readability of Wikipedia's articles on epilepsy was evaluated and found to be low, indicating that they were difficult to read. Another study found that Wikipedia's information about neurological diseases was significantly more difficult to read than the information in the American Academy of Neurology's patient brochures, the Mayo Clinic's website, or MedlinePlus. Another 2015 study, this one authored by Samy Azer, reported that Wikipedia should not be used to learn about concepts related to pulmonology students. Another 2015 study by Azer found that Wikipedia entries about cardiovascular diseases were "not aimed at a medical audience" and were mainly inaccurate due to errors of omission.
A 2016 study found that Wikipedia information about common internal medicine diagnoses was written at a higher grade level than any of the four other sites studied. In contrast, another study published the same year found that medical students reading about three unstudied diseases on AccessMedicine and Wikipedia experienced less mental effort than did readers of the same diseases on UpToDate.
A 2017 study evaluating 134 Wikipedia articles on autoimmune diseases found that they were very difficult to read and required at least a university graduate reading level. The study's authors were concerned by Wikipedia's low readability, as people with autoimmune disorders often use Wikipedia to research their condition.
A 2018 study evaluating 55 Wikipedia articles on neurosurgical topics found that they were significantly more difficult to read than the American Association of Neurological Surgeons's patient information articles, although both Wikipedia's articles and the AANS articles required a college reading level.
Other views
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has said that lack of health information increases preventable deaths in emerging markets and that health information from Wikipedia can improve community health. Wales presented the Wikipedia Zero project as a channel for delivering health information into places where people have difficulty accessing online information.As a result of public interest in the 2014 Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, Wikipedia became a popular source of information on Ebola. Doctors who were Wikipedia contributors said that Wikipedia's quality made it useful.