Canadian students develop mediwiki to share classroom notes with the world.

medical student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, wanted a central repository for his notes. Since he was lugging his laptop to class anyway, he figured putting them on a website made sense. And though his original motivation was to enhance his education, LaPierre thought his website could also help students across Canada and in other countries, especially those in resource-poor areas. And so “Sharing in Health,” an open-access resource with many contributors, was born (www.sharinginhealth.ca). “In the back of my mind, I thought students around the world could benefit from this,” says LaPierre, now completing a family medicine residency at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. “I worked on it on my own for a few years, and then asked my classmates at Dalhousie if they would be interested in writing articles and asked professors to review them.” Eventually, LaPierre reached out to students across Canada to participate, not only those in medical programs, but also people studying to become nurses, dietitians and other types of health care professionals. There are now around 100 contributors, mostly from Canada but also from other countries. Their goal is to increase global training capacity, especially in places where learning resources are limited. “It’s growing and growing. In any given week, three to five topics are being put up,” says LaPierre. “The target audience is very much primary care workers. All told, the site will probably top out at around 2800 to 3000 topics.” Sharing in Health uses a wiki model, and anyone can apply to be an author, even undergraduates. There is a stringent review process, however, and reviewers