In May, the Directorate-General for Health and Consumers of the European Commission launched the Heidi health wiki.
Heidi (Health in Europe: Information and Data Interface) is a new way of disseminating European health information the Commission is testing. Although Heidi has been set up by DG Health and Consumers, the Commission will not provide the articles in the wiki, instead, Heidi will be based on contributions from European health experts.
Heidi aims to create a sustainable system for health information that is relevant, reliable and, more importantly, can be easily kept up-to-date. With the wiki concept, the Commission tries to bring together the expert community to share, compare and develop health information across Europe.
As a wiki, Heidi is a dynamic platform in which users can correct existing information and publish new data quickly. They can also give feedback and discuss the quality or the usefulness of the data.
Heidi contains articles about health status, determinants, diseases, health systems, trends, institutional and policy aspects. The articles are based on scientific and evidenced data.
To become a useful source of information, Heidi needs input from researchers, academics and other health experts. With their help, Heidi's content can be up-dated, expanded and enriched, so that it becomes a true living report on health in Europe.
