Today we’re bringing you the interview with Mediwikis’ co-founder Stuart Maitland. He’s a medical student himself, performing a research year in Msc Neuroinformatics. In 2013, Stuart was awarded “Britain’s Top Real Role Model” for the early concept for Mediwikis. Here’s how our interview went…

How would you pitch your company? What’s your elevator pitch?

Mediwikis is a collaborative platform that supports the medical learning community in the UK. It provides thousands of pages of crowd-sourced, original information, bespoke to the needs of students at each university; it’s also an arena for those students to share the best ideas and practice.

What sets you apart from competitors?

Mediwikis is a medical education community that provides the most relevant information that students need at their fingertips. It allows students to rapidly build learning communities to share knowledge with their peers, using the same software behind Wikipedia. Each university has its own hub, with resources specific to that university, while sharing ideas, knowledge, and best practice between universities.

What’s your business model?

The site has to be free for medical students who are often already stretched financially. We therefore support the site through non-invasive advertising and sponsorship.

Can you share some numbers? How many users do you have?

We have over 10,000 students using the site each month. At our pilot at Newcastle University, we saw 85% of students there regularly use the site for their learning.

Where do you see the company going from here?

By making Mediwikis free for students and universities, ideas and knowledge can flow freely to where they are needed, and students in countries with less developed medical education systems can connect and engage with other medical education systems across the world. We’re establishing communities in universities around the world, and enabling medical students from all backgrounds to engage with their international colleagues.

Where do you see the mHealth industry going?

By using mobile applications to support their knowledge, doctors can make more informed healthcare decisions wherever they need to, and I really want to see the mHealth industry support this aim.