Letters to the Editor
gender minority (SGM) trainees.2 MSPA
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information on Wikipedia. This creates
and patients, while benefiting future
capitalized on social media to expand
to over 50 medical schools nationwide,
helping many affiliated chapters launch
their institution’s first SGM student
group. From an online network of 6
medical students, MSPA is now present
in 30 states, with a growing member base
that connects via digital platforms to
advocate and build community.
Social media can thus be a helpful tool
to use for recruitment and retention of
URiM health care providers. Discussions
in medical education have primarily
centered around the consequences of
inappropriate usage of social media.
However, it will benefit students if their
institutions also educate on strategies for
how to use online platforms innovatively
and productively, using examples such
as MSPA. Given the challenges that
many underrepresented medical trainees
encounter seeking mentorship in a field
lacking representation, schools must
provide students the tools to leverage
social media as a resource to alleviate
these barriers while also working to
increase diversity in health care.
Disclosures: None reported.
Sabina T. Spigner, MS, MPH
Second-year medical student, University of Pittsburgh
School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
STS143@Pitt.edu; Twitter: @SabinaSpigner; ORCID:
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5662-519.
Marija Kamceva
Third-year medical student, Stanford University
School of Medicine, Stanford, California; ORCID:
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2664-2162.
References
1 Association of American Medical Colleges.
Table 3: U.S. medical school faculty by
rank and race/ethnicity, 2018. https://www.
aamc.org/data-reports/faculty-institutions/
interactive-data/data-reports/faculty-
institutions/interactive-data/2018-us-
medical-school-faculty. Published December
31, 2019. Accessed August 6, 2020.
2 Medical Student Pride Alliance. About MSPA.
https://www.medpride.org/about-mspa.
Accessed August 6, 2020.
Leveraging a Global Network
of Medical Students to
Improve Wikipedia’s Health
Content
To the Editor: Despite
discouragement from faculty due to
variable quality, medical students and
patients alike continue actively seeking
Academic Medicine, Vol. 95, No. 11 / November 2020
Copyright © by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
a disconnect between educators and
the future doctors and patients who
consult Wikipedia as an initial resource.
Although a few medical schools have
offered instruction in improving
medical articles on Wikipedia,1
adoption has been limited. Meanwhile,
the online medical education platform
Osmosis has accumulated tens of
thousands of active medical student
users. Through grants to promote
open educational pedagogy,2 Osmosis’
director of open learning initiatives
(A.A.) created a pilot Wikipedia-
editing course for Osmosis subscribers.
This formal instruction in editing
Wikipedia’s health content exposed
students to both resource evaluation
and the peer-review process.
The Wikipedia-editing course for
Osmosis subscribers was implemented
through the Wiki Education course
dashboard in July 2019.3 Novel elements
included videoconference meetings,
decentralized file sharing, and cloud-
based collaborations. Students were
mentored on resource retrieval, access,
and vetting by a medical school instructor
and a librarian. Weekly work-in-progress
meetings ensured appropriate student
progress. During the penultimate week,
students completed open peer reviews of
classmates’ work on Wikipedia. The final
week was spent responding to reviewers’
suggestions.
In 4 weeks, 11 students from different
medical schools on 3 continents added
8,775 words and 119 references to 11
Wikipedia pages, which were viewed
175,022 times during the course.
Limitations included restricting
eligibility to English-proficient Osmosis-
subscribing medical students with
adequate technological resources.
Nevertheless, this decentralized
Wikipedia-editing course enabled
multiple positive outcomes. Students
developed critical thinking through
reference evaluation and participation
in peer review. Additionally, students
learned to navigate Wikipedia’s quality
ratings, which they can share with
future patients, thereby empowering
independent evaluation of Wikipedia
article quality. Yet, the greatest potential
impact may be the direct improvements
to health-related Wikipedia content.
These outcomes bridge an information
gap between the medical profession
scholarship.
Disclosures: At the time of this work, Dr. Amin
Azzam was a pedagogical consultant on a Hewlett
Foundation–sponsored grant to Osmosis to
promote Open Educational Practice (OEP)
through scalable technology. This involved
working with faculty at other medical and health
professional schools to create Wikipedia-editing
assignments and/or courses.
Tolga Kamil Guven
Final-year medical student, Charles University,
Prague, Czech Republic; tolgakguven@gmail.com;
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7733-4266.
Tanya Cupino, PhD
Third-year medical student, Loma Linda University,
Loma Linda, California; ORCID: https://orcid.
org/0000-0002-4424-7473.
Amin Azzam, MD, MA
Adjunct professor, Department of Psychiatry,
University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco,
California; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-
7024-7450.
References
1 Joshi M, Verduzco R, Yogi S, et al. Wikipedia
editing courses at three US medical
schools in the 2017-2018 academic year.
MedEdPublish. 2019;8:76.
2 Hewlett Foundation. Knowledge Diffusion
Inc (DBA Osmosis): For promoting open
educational practice through scalable
technology. https://hewlett.org/grants/
knowledge-diffusion-inc-dba-osmosis-
for-promoting-open-educational-practice-
through-scalable-technology. Updated April
10, 2018. Accessed July 24, 2020.
3 Azzam A. Wikipedia: Wiki Ed/Osmosis/
Osmosis Wikipedia-editing course July 2019
(Summer). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/Osmosis/Osmosis_
Wikipedia-editing_course_July_2019_
(Summer). Updated August 9, 2019. Accessed
July 24, 2020.
Keeping Pace: The Need for
Digital Health Education in
Medical Schools
To the Editor: The potential of
digital technologies in clinical settings is
enormous. However, to take full advantage
of these technologies, medical students
need to have a basic understanding of
how and why they work, as well as their
potential pitfalls. Unfortunately, the rate
of digital implementation is far exceeding
the rate of increasing digital health
literacy. Although some basic statistics,
epidemiology, and informatics courses are
offered at medical schools, as students, we
do not receive basic training in fields, such
as artificial intelligence (AI), biohacking,
or big data. These technologies are not
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