About Orthopaedia

Mission

to provide a trusted, comprehensive and open peer-reviewed on-line collaborative knowledgebase in musculoskeletal medicine and orthopaedic surgery

to harness The Wisdom of Crowds for improved education, research and patient care

to provide an integrated social and professional network and foster knowledge transfer and collaboration across the orthopaedic community

What is Orthopaedia®?

At a simple level, think of Orthopaedia® as an "Orthopaedic Encyclopedia" whose readers can use the system to communicate with each other and thereby share, teach and learn. We also hope to honor the classic text of Andry, the book whose title that named the field. (He too spelled it Orthop ae dia.)

Orthopaedia® is a collaborative orthopaedic knowledgebase, a repository of educational materials and a social network for the exchange of information. Orthopaedia® is built on a simple, powerful wiki platform that lets you create and share articles, videos, and documents with your colleagues.

(Note to fans of etymology: the 'paedia' in both words refers to child. Andre defined a field interested in correcting deformity, ie. making 'straight' (orthos) children. An encyclopedia is a book whose range was thought to be complete for the education of children.)

(Note to rabid fans of etymology: the best discussion on this topic was given by Diab)

Who is behind Orthopaedia®?

Orthopedia® is sponsored by the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons, an organization whose primary mission is to "disseminate orthopaedic knowledge".

Atlassian supports our efforts by contributing Confluence, the professional wiki, for our development.

Atlassian is an innovative Australian software company providing enterprise software solutions to the world's leading organisations. Atlassian's newest software product, Confluence is a knowledge management tool designed to make it easy for a team to communicate: sharing information, collaborating on documents and brainstorming ideas, all in a single web-based location.

Orthopaedia® Timeline

If you are reading this, at the very least a nascent form of Orthopedia® exists!

Orthopedia® began as a Table of Contents, also known as The CORR Curriculum (a term suggested by Dr Stuart Green). "Early adopters", ie. zealots, are gradually posting articles. It is hoped that when critical mass is achieved a Tipping Point will be reached and Orthopaedia will be the primary destination of a community of regular readers and writers.

How Orthopaedia® Differs from a Textbook

The table of contents is not fixed--if you think there should be an article on Ancient Semitic Languages or Platonic Epistemology in Orthopaedia®, please write one!
Anybody can write
Anybody can edit
Anybody can create and share articles, videos, and documents with colleagues or the community.

Orthopaedia® is consider a closed community, where "Anybody" refers to "Any Member" of the Orthopaedia® community. Membership is open to all orthopaedic students, residents, fellows, surgeons or allied health professionals.

What is Great about Orthopaedia®

Because Anybody can write and Anybody can edit, over time Orthopedia® should evolve to be the most accurate and useful education tool in the world of musculoskeletal medicine and orthopedic surgery. To be sure, the wiki format has its doubters

Legalese

1. We are not giving medical advice.
2. We do not intend to violate copyright. We follow the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and will remove any content that infringes someone else's copyright. See Copyright Infringement Notification for more details.
3. Articles are posted with the understanding that they can be reproduced for non-commercial purposes as long as appropriate attribution is given in accordance with aCreative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License.