Science and Medicine

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."

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See also

• ▸Black Death in Russia
• ▸Fourteen Holy Helpers
• ▸Eliodoro Mercado

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