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| Year : 2013 | Volume
: 1
| Issue : 1 | Page : 53-54 |
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King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Arabic health encyclopedia (www.kaahe.org): A reliable source for health information in Arabic in the internet
Abdulrhman Alsughayr
Department of Family Medicine, College of Medicine, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, P.O. Box 3660, Riyadh 11481, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
| Date of Web Publication | 3-Jun-2013 |
Correspondence Address:
Abdulrhman Alsughayr
College of Medicine, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, P.O. Box 3660, Riyadh 11481
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/1658-631X.112937
How to cite this article:
Alsughayr A. King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Arabic health encyclopedia (www.kaahe.org): A reliable source for health information in Arabic in the internet. Saudi J Med Med Sci 2013;1:53-4 |
How to cite this URL:
Alsughayr A. King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Arabic health encyclopedia (www.kaahe.org): A reliable source for health information in Arabic in the internet. Saudi J Med Med Sci [serial online] 2013 [cited 2023 Mar 28];1:53-4. Available from: https://www.sjmms.net/text.asp?2013/1/1/53/112937 |
As the number of Internet users searching for information in different branches of knowledge is constantly increasing, the web is increasingly considered as a vital source of information. This in turn has emphasized the necessity to ensure reliable and trustworthy sources of information on the web, so that Internet users can "separate the wheat from the chaff" and avoid misleading information.
When it comes to health, searching for health information on the web by patients or the average persons might be risky. A recent study, conducted in the King Saud University for health sciences, showed that the Arabic health content on the Internet is very poor, and most of the Arabic health websites (95%) failed to achieve the international quality standards of health websites.
So it became evident for the need to build a comprehensive trustworthy online Arabic health encyclopedia, for the benefit of Arab readers around the world. The idea of the project was presented to his Royal Highness Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, Honorary President of the Saudi Association for Health Informatics, who in turn transferred the idea to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, who graciously approved the project and gave his directions to allocate budget for it.
The National Guard Health Affairs has taken upon itself to administer, finance and execute the project in cooperation with the Saudi Association for Health Informatics. In this regard, a lot of agreements were signed with different international organizations and parties (like World Health Organization, Geneva University, Health on the Net Foundation and Patient Education Institute).
King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Arabic Health Encyclopedia's (AAHE) website was first launched during the Saudi E-Health Conference, held in Riyadh on 11 th March 2012, and became the first trusted Arabic health website (www.kaahe.org).
The site includes thousands of pages of textual and interactive content, written in an easy and plain language that fits with all community groups and can be browsed on different computers, tablets, and mobile phones.
- Medical Topics: This section contains a large number of topics talking about diseases (causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment) classified due to medical specialties. Topics under this section can be viewed traditionally or interactively.
- 3D Human Body: This service offers labeled high-resolution images of different systems and organs of the human body. All body parts are linked to related materials in the KAAHE website.
- Healthy Life Styles: This section contains topics about promoting health for different groups and ages, topics about healthy diet, recipes, and health advices.
- Getting Healthcare: This section contains detailed information about medications, medical procedures (lab tests, X-Ray imaging, and surgical operations), and alternative and complementary medicine.
- News and Events: This section contains up to date news published in cooperation with an international health news agency (HealthDay News). It also contains an agenda for international health days.
- More Resources: This section contains topics about Islamic medical history, Islamic health guide, and Arabic medical philology. It also contains medical e-books, and medical terms' dictionary.
- Social Media: KAAHE has pages on different social media websites, like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Facebook and Twitter's pages highlight some of KAAHE's content (topics, news, events, etc.) and receive the comments of fans, while KAAHE's channel on YouTube contains videos showing experts explaining medical cases, or patients talking about their experiences with different diseases.
- Upcoming Projects: KAAHE's team works constantly on adding new materials to the encyclopedia's content and updating the current content. Work is underway to add symptom checker to KAAHE's website in cooperation with leading universities and institutes, in addition to generating mobile phone applications.
KAAHE's content is managed through a unique content system management (known as workflow). The workflow reflects the mechanism of action in KAAHE. Generating new topics passes through nine steps:
Steps 1, 2 : Editing topics coming from outsources/creating new topics.
Step 3 : Verifying English content of topics.
Step 4 : Translating into Arabic.
Step 5 : Adding media to the topic.
Step 6 : Verifying Arabic content, media, and quality standards.
Step 7 : Verifying translated content by the licensor.
Step 8 : Final verification of the topic by the editor-in-chief.
Step 9 : Publishing content to the production website.
In conclusion, building a comprehensive health encyclopedia is not an easy mission. From its early beginning, KAAHE faced a lot of problems and could overcome them by the grace of Allah first, then the support and interest of Saudi leadership. Some of these challenges are (1) simplifying information, as health and medical information is written originally in a professional language that is not easy to understand by average persons; (2) keeping the site up to date, as health and medical information is altering and expanding day after day; (3) finding out the best look and feel for different site pages, and deciding on the right way to present and organize the information.
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