Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wiki Project Med:Achieving Global Impact
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Applicant information
edit- Organization name or Wikimedia Username for individuals. (required)
- Wiki Project Med Foundation
- Do you have any approved General Support Fund requests? (required)
- Yes, I have already applied and received a General Support Fund
- You are applying as a(n). (required)
- Wikimedia Affiliate (chapter, thematic org., or user group)
- Are your group or organization legally registered in your country? (required)
- Yes
- Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
- Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
- Please provide links to the following documents if they are available
These documentation can be provided in your local language(s), no translations required.
- Organizational website
- Detailed financial reporting and/or audits
- Documentation of the governance structure, board list, governance processes
- Documentation of the general assembly decision on your plan
Main proposal
edit- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be a title for the Meta-Wiki page. (required)
- Wiki Project Med: Achieving Global Impact
- 2. Do you want to apply for the multi-year base funding for 3 years? (required) (only for returning applicants)
- No
- 2.1. Provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan? (required)
N/A
- 3. Proposed start date. (required)
- 2025-01-01
- 4. Proposed end date. (required)
- 2025-12-31
- 5. Does your organization or group have an Affiliate or Organizational Annual Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required)
- Yes
- Full 2-year retrospective and prospectus: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oDqix2GA-syDrztxKzBSi-5nd2ZoEOAPcdqTfzTIch0/edit
- 6. Does your affiliate, organization or group have a Strategic Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required)
- Yes
- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oDqix2GA-syDrztxKzBSi-5nd2ZoEOAPcdqTfzTIch0/edit
- 7. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
- International (more than one country across continents or regions)
- Our content is used and reused all over the world, especially in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC). We focus in particular on Africa, the Middle East, and southeast Asia--in countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan, Uganda, and Vietnam. Our translation program is global with an explicit goal of reaching dozens of lesser-spoken languages in every country. The top languages--by article count--are Odia, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Farsi, Armenian, Korean, and Spanish. Our Internet In A Box (IIAB) initiative ships units to targeted LMIC countries with little, slow, or no internet access including Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Honduras.
- 8. What are your programs, approaches, and strategies? What are the challenges that you are trying to address and how will your strategies support you in addressing these challenges? (required)
English Wikipedia has 30,000 medical articles, with 150,000 in 280+ languages. These receive 5 billion pageviews annually, making Wikipedia one of the leading sources of health information online. Wikipedia has been successful in addressing public health needs of a literate, English-speaking population with reliable internet access; however, most people globally do not fall within this group. More than 80% of people do not speak English, and nearly half the world is not online.
There is a global lack of access to accurate and empowering healthcare information for most people, in a language they can understand, in a format that they can benefit from. Tens of thousands of people die from simply this lack of information every day.
Since 2012, Wiki Project Med has been leading educational, technical, and outreach initiatives to make medical information accessible to people around the world, in their own language, online and offline. Now, we need support to scale our programs and increase our global impact so that we can save more lives around the world.
Focus Area: Language Empowerment
- The majority of healthcare content in the world is not in native speakers' languages.
- English Wikipedia has ample healthcare content but it's not designed for translation.
- Features needed for patients and health-care providers to make good decisions are not permitted on Wikipedia.
Our solution: MDWiki.com enhances Wikipedia, adds a layer of medical review, and makes stable versions of articles ready for translation into multiple languages. Essential content such as medication dosing, missing from Wikipedia, is included. With 5 million annual page views, MDWiki is serving content also used in our offline app and translation projects. We want MDWiki.com to grow and drive innovation across the public health information landscape.
Our solution: The Translation Task Force addresses needs of the other 300 languages in which Wikipedia exists. We have translated over thousands of articles, working in nearly 100 languages. This content receives tens of million of pageviews per year. We have a committed group of medical and language experts and are eager to scale our efforts.
Focus Area: Global Access
- Half the globe doesn't have reliable internet access to medical content.
- Libraries and schools in many regions lack health info due to poor infrastructure.
Our solution: The WikiMed App allows anyone to download medical content when the internet is present and save it for future offline use. Our apps are available for free on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux, in multiple languages. They include medicine, anatomy, pharmacology, sanitation, medication doses, how-to advice, costs by region, explanation of procedures, and over 300 videos. With over 100,000 active installs, the app is being most used by people in Pakistan, India, Nepal, Egypt and other Arabic-speaking countries, and the United States. Many users are health care providers or doctors-in-training, so improving the quality and popularity of the app will directly impact local healthcare around the world.
Our solution: Internet-in-a-Box allows healthcare content to be accessed where there is no internet at all. These miniature devices contain all of English Wikipedia plus several other languages and MDWiki, along with a variety of educational content like Khan Academy. The small, inexpensive unit creates a Wi-Fi hotspot and gives access for up to 32 people within 100 meters to read, watch, learn and download. They cost $40 each to produce, and so far our volunteer-led pilot has been limited to making and mailing around 300 devices. If we could scale regional production and distribution, millions more could benefit.
Focus Area: Rich Content
- Healthcare professionals around the world need access to more medical images to diagnose and treat illnesses.
- The majority of free medical images have a license that is currently incompatible with Wikipedia, and thus they are not achieving their full reach and benefit.
Our solution: NCCommons.com collects and curates Non-Commercial (NC) and Non-Derivative (ND) licensed images. With over 1 million files, many of them high-quality medical images, we've created a central repository for all NC and ND licensed content. This is the first-ever effort to collect all the world's NC and ND licensed materials. Tens of millions more medical images, as well as Khan Academy videos, TED talks, etc exist under these licenses, but we need more resources and staff in order to gather and organize them en masse in the NCCommons repository.
- 9. What categories are your main programs and related activities under? Please select all that apply. (required)
| Category | Yes/No |
|---|---|
| Education | No |
| Culture, heritage or GLAM | No |
| Gender and diversity | No |
| Community support and engagement | No |
| Participation in campaigns and contests | No |
| Public policy advocacy | No |
| Other | No |
- 10. Please include a link to or upload a timeline (operational calendar) for your programs and activities. (required)
- Please see the Timeline section in: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oDqix2GA-syDrztxKzBSi-5nd2ZoEOAPcdqTfzTIch0/edit
- 11. Describe your team. (required)
Wiki Project Med is a 501(c)3 nonprofit approved by the Wikimedia Community to develop, organize, and distribute health care content. Its founders and board, nearly all physicians, include the top contributors to Wikipedia's medical content.
- Board Members: http://mdwiki.org/wiki/WikiProjectMed:Board#Board_members
- Advisors: http://mdwiki.org/wiki/WikiProjectMed:Board#Special_adviser
Hiring and Recruitment In the past year, we strategically bolstered our team to drive impact across our initiatives. James Hare transitioned from his role as Engineering/Product Manager to focus on tech recruitment, ensuring we attract top talent to meet our growing technical demands. With our growing roster of developers—Ryan, Hassan, Brian, and Ibrahem—we have dramatically enhanced our technical capacity. Additionally, the continuation of Lucas as our Outreach and Partnerships Coordinator has amplified our external collaborations, enabling us to forge meaningful partnerships that extend our reach globally. These hires have been pivotal in scaling our operations and elevating the quality and scope of our work.
Governance Governance improvements in 2024 laid the foundation for sustained organizational growth. With two new board members—Tesleemah Abdulkareem and Deb Rotman—joining, and Dr. James Heilman re-elected as Chair, we ensured strong leadership continuity while injecting fresh perspectives. Our newly formed Executive Committee, consisting of Jake, James Heilman, Tim, Deb, and Stuart, has provided effective oversight. The expansion of our special advisory group to nine members, including Michael Wolf, an intellectual property lawyer, has been instrumental in guiding key decisions. This fortified governance structure is ensuring we are well-equipped to navigate future challenges while maximizing our global health impact.
Financial Operations Streamlined financial operations have greatly improved our efficiency. We successfully implemented ACH payments with our banking partners, while establishing reliable Western Union payment processes for team members like Ibrahem working in challenging financial environments. These changes have empowered us to allocate resources more effectively, allowing our global projects to run smoothly and ensuring uninterrupted delivery of critical health information to underserved populations.
We currently have 7 contractors and are planning on hiring another in 2025: 1) Ibrahem Al-Radaei is working with us full time. They are managing development of the healthcare translation dashboard, pulling impact statistics for healthcare across all the languages of WP, and take care of many mass uploads to NC Commons and Commons. Their proposed pay for 2025 is ~15,000 USD. 2) Hassan Amin is working for us as a contractor at 60 USD/hr at about 0.5 of an FTE. He is managing VideoWiki developement and taking on efforts around OWID integration ~40,000 USD. 3) Jake Orlowitz is to be paid a flat rate for managing fundraising of 18,000 USD for 2025. 4) Lucas Rosnau is working a ~0.4 FTE and is paid at $40/hr, 25,000 USD. They are managing outreach with our translation partners aswell as working to recruit further partners. 5) Ryan Schmidt manages the webhosting of MDWiki and NCCommons as well as does core software development. He is paid by the hour at 110 USD for software development and is paid partly based on data usage and hard disk space. 6) Brian Wolff has been working on OWID intergration and the calculator tool. They are funded at 75 USD/hr. It is unclear how much time they will have available for us in 2025. 7) Adam Holt is going to be taking on management of Internet-in-a-Box production in 2025, as well as managing customer concerns and questions. Payment structure has not yet been determined but we are looking at pay per unit work performed. Their budget is included within IIAB hardware and we are estimating 7,500 USD. 8) We are planning to hire another contractor in 2025 to take on management of Internet-in-a-Box software development. We have not conclusively chosen who to hire at this point or what payment structure we will be providing. The budget line for this expense is ~10,000 USD.
- 12. Will you be working with any internal (Wikimedia) or external partners? Describe the characteristics of these partnerships and bring a few examples of the most significant partnerships. (required)
MDWiki now forms the basis of our offline EN app for android, built in collaboration with Kiwix. This app has seen more than 120,000 downloads, mostly from low and middle income countries, many of who are health care providers or students. This allows us to be responsive to requests for improvements from our app users.
Our partnership with Translators without Borders created over 20,000 articles in more then 150 languages! This translated content has received more than 5 billion pageviews. That work was carried out by more than 3,250 translators. ProZ has now begun onboarding additional volunteer translators to for our translation efforts.
We developed an extension which allows use of Our World In Data (OWID) material securely within a mediawiki install. We have integrated their health related graphs into MDWiki. Plus we have developed templates so that the most recent version flows into our offline efforts. We are collaborating with the technical team at OWID on making their material more multilingual.
Other partners include NIOSH (National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health) and the CDC, in the U.S., Cochrane, and the WHO (World Health Organization).
- 13. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select all that apply. (required)
- Improve User Experience, Coordinate Across Stakeholders, Identify Topics for Impact, Innovate in Free Knowledge, Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt
Metrics
editWikimedia Metrics
edit- 14. Please select and fill out Wikimedia Metrics for your proposal. (recommended)
- 14.1. Number of participants, editors, and organizers.
All metrics provided are optional, please fill them out if they are aligned with your programs and activities.
| Metrics name | Target | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of all participants | N/A | N/A |
| Number of all editors | N/A | N/A |
| Number of new editors | N/A | |
| Number of retained editors | N/A | |
| Number of all organizers | N/A | N/A |
| Number of new organizers | N/A |
- 14.2. Number of new content contributions to Wikimedia projects. (recommended)
| Wikimedia project | Created | Edited or improved |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | ||
| Wikimedia Commons | ||
| Wikidata | ||
| Wiktionary | ||
| Wikisource | ||
| Wikimedia Incubator | ||
| Translatewiki | ||
| MediaWiki | ||
| Wikiquote | ||
| Wikivoyage | ||
| Wikibooks | ||
| Wikiversity | ||
| Wikinews | ||
| Wikispecies | ||
| Wikifunctions / Abstract Wikipedia |
- Description for Wikimedia projects contributions metrics. (optional)
Other Metrics
edit- 15. Do you have other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required)
- Yes
| Other Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Language Empowerment | We aim to foster greater access to knowledge across linguistic barriers by maintaining and expanding our translation efforts. By keeping the translation dashboard operational, we will grow the number of active translators to over 250, increase translated articles to more than 10,000, and expand language coverage to over 70. Our target is to reach a total of 10 million pageviews for these translated articles.
Goal: Enable access to multilingual content and boost global readership. Impact: Increase in engagement and accessibility worldwide. Metrics: 250+ translators, 10,000+ articles translated, 70+ languages involved, 10 million+ pageviews. We will also reignite our collaboration with Translators Without Borders (TWB), enhancing translation quality and expanding our reach into underserved languages. Goal: Strengthen partnerships to improve translation standards. Impact: Higher quality translations and broader language support. Metrics: Number of partnership activities with TWB, Volume of articles translated through this collaboration. Additionally, we will increase the number of articles ready for translation from 3,000 to 4,000, ensuring a broader range of topics is accessible to diverse audiences. Goal: Improve the availability of content in multiple languages. Impact: Greater access to vital information globally. Metrics: Increase to 4,000+ articles ready for translation. |
1 |
| Global Access | Continuing our distribution of Internet-in-a-Box (IIAB) devices via the Wikipedia store, we aim to expand offline access to Wikipedia content, especially for educational institutions in remote areas. This effort ensures that underserved communities can access a wealth of knowledge.
Goal: Improve offline access and educational outreach. Impact: Better operational efficiency in distributing knowledge. Metrics: Number of IIAB devices distributed, Customer satisfaction ratings. We also plan to upload all Khan Academy and TED videos to NC Commons, making high-quality educational resources widely available. Goal: Increase access to top-tier educational content. Impact: Enhanced learning opportunities. Metrics: Number of videos uploaded, Usage statistics for these educational videos. Another priority is building a workflow to integrate content from NC Commons into different language editions of Wikipedia, enriching the platform's diversity. Goal: Streamline the integration of rich content into Wikipedia. Impact: Improved collaboration and content quality. Metrics: Number of languages using integrated content, Workflow efficiency metrics. We will move 500,000 public domain images from NC Commons to Wikimedia Commons, making them accessible with a CT scan viewer, which will greatly improve visual resources for educational purposes. Goal: Increase availability of visual resources. Impact: Higher-quality image accessibility and viewability. Metrics: Number of images transferred, Viewer engagement metrics. Lastly, we intend to publish a paper in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization to highlight the outcomes of our collaboration and contribute to global health discussions. Goal: Provide evidence-based insights into our collaboration. Impact: Support for global health initiatives. Metrics: Successful publication, Citation counts (including AltMetrics). |
1 |
| Rich Content | 3. Rich Content Development
We plan to integrate interactive Our World in Data (OWID) graphs into at least 10 language editions of Wikipedia, ensuring the material stays up-to-date. This will offer enhanced data visualization, improving users' understanding of global issues. Goal: Broaden access to interactive data visualizations. Impact: Improved global understanding and engagement. Metrics: Number of languages with integrated graphs, Number of graphs available, Frequency of updates. Expanding our flexible calculator widget to work on 10 different languages of Wikipedia will also provide more interactive tools for users, increasing engagement. Goal: Increase the availability of practical tools. Impact: Enhanced user engagement with interactive content. Metrics: Number of languages featuring the widget, Widget usage statistics. We will collaborate with the Basque Wikipedia community to promote video content creation, enriching the multimedia resources available on the platform. Goal: Encourage community-driven multimedia content creation. Impact: Improved community participation and enriched content. Metrics: Number of videos created, Community engagement levels, Impact on Basque Wikipedia. Our plans also include introducing a text-to-video feature within VideoWiki, enabling users to easily create videos from written content. This feature will provide a new and innovative way to consume information. Goal: Simplify multimedia content creation. Impact: Increased accessibility and content diversity. Metrics: Feature launch success, Number of videos created using this feature. Finally, we aim to foster relationships around creating medical illustrations for Wikipedia. By collaborating with medical illustrators, we will improve the visual quality and accuracy of medical content on the platform. Goal: Develop high-quality visual resources for medical education. Impact: More accurate and engaging medical information. Metrics: Number of partnerships with medical illustrators, Quality and quantity of medical illustrations produced, Usage statistics of the illustrations. |
1 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
Budget
edit- 16. Will you have any other revenue sources when implementing this proposal (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required)
- No
- 16.1. List other revenue sources. (required)
N/A
- 16.2. Approximately how much revenue will you have from other sources in your local currency? (required)
- N/A
- 17. Your local currency. (required)
- USD
- 18. What is the total requested amount in your local currency? (required)
- 180000 USD
| Year | Amount (local currency) |
|---|---|
| Year 1 | N/A USD |
| Year 2 | N/A USD |
| Year 3 | N/A USD |
- 19. Does this proposal include compensation for staff or contractors? (required)
- Yes
- 19.1. How many paid staff members do you plan to have? (required)
Include the number of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include them separately and mention their terms.
- 7 contractors, 0 staff.
- 19.2. How many FTEs (full-time equivalents) in total? (required)
Include the total FTE of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include their FTEs with the terms separately.
- 2.75 FTE
- 19.3. Describe any staff or contractor changes compared to the current year / ongoing General Support Fund if any. (required only for returning grantees)
- We now have more 2 developers working on more projects, including more developers from outside North America. Meanwhile, we reduced the technical project manager role significantly as it was not deemed necessary.
- 20. Please provide an overview of your overall budget categories in your local currency. The budget breakdown should include only the amount requested with this General Support Fund (required).
| Budget category | Amount in local currency |
|---|---|
| Staff and contractor costs | 0 USD |
| Operational costs | 45000 USD |
| Programmatic costs | 135000 USD |
- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GSHWqeRpohHt17IRa_v8VC70k3UUGDmO_NLZOjc486M/
Additional information
edit- 22. In this optional space you can add any other additional information about your proposal or organization that you think can help us when reviewing your proposal. (optional)
MDwiki (MDwiki.org) is a legitimate content "fork" of Wikipedia's medical content that was created to enhance health information in novel and meaningful ways. It has over 4,000 unique articles and receives 5 million pageviews per year. It functions as a complete integrated encyclopedia, with automatic mirroring of all other links and pages present in Wikipedia.
MDWiki is written by a core of many of the top-10 most prolific medical editors on Wikipedia over the last decade. While the number of unique articles on MDWiki are modest, the impact is outsized: millions of words have been translated, which have gathered tens of millions of views in nearly 100 languages. Content from MDWiki flows into an offline app used by over 100,000 people, many who are health care providers.
MDWiki differs from Wikipedia in significant ways:
- Content pages have improved multimedia interaction and are geared for offline use.
- Encourages inclusion of video, including Non-Commerical (NC) and Non-Derivative (ND) licenses.
- Medication costs are permitted and encouraged. Also includes medication doses.
- Written for a general audience with the understanding that many people who use the resource may speak English as a second language.
- Editing is restricted to registered and approved individuals, and there is a clear code of conduct.
- Paid conflict of interest editing is not permitted (disclosed or otherwise).
- The goal is to provide the best possible content for users, and innovation is welcome.
English Wikipedia maintains that it is not a how-to manual. As such it prohibits specific treatment information, such as medicine dosages. There are also concerns that a reader/practitioner might misunderstand a dosage, misuse a medicine, or that vandalism or inaccuracy would lead to real world injury and associated liability. These concerns are understood and well-handled with MDwiki's prominent MEDICAL DISCLAIMER, which makes Wiki Project Medicine, and MDwiki editors, no more liable than any Wikipedia editor or Wikimedia organization.
For comparison, WikiEm, the world's largest open licensed global emergency medicine wiki also includes dosages. It is impractical, and counterproductive, to provide health information that is almost sufficient for educating practitioners in remote and impoverished locations but to stop at the actual dosages of medicines used.
English Wikipedia resists using more common words that promote translation and human understanding. A preference for technical jargon (i.e. "renal" instead of the more familiar "kidney") makes for a tension between editor and reader. At MDWiki we are aligned with the interest that the reader, who may be a less-educated, lower-income, non-English speaker, should still be able to comprehend every article.
Lastly, English Wikipedia is opposed to video versions of articles (VideoWiki), which reduces accessibility and viral impact. It's hard to share many screens worth of text, and many people prefer to consume information in an audiovisual format. English Wikipedia has made clear that video versions of existing articles are not wanted and are in tension with the article's more important written-language. MDWiki is not limited in the formats we offer; indeed, we know that alternatives to text improve public health outcomes.
By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.
We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
- Yes
Feedback
edit- Please add any feedback to the grant discussion page only. Any feedback added here will be removed.