A WIKIPEDIA-style medical encyclopedia, which aims to make health information accessible to everyone, could be online by the end of the year.

Written and edited only by trained professionals, the Medpedia Project will compile the type of information usually found only in academic circles, according to Medpedia founder James Currier.

"Medicine is one of the least-developed areas of the Internet, and at the same time one of the areas that can be most improved by the internet," Currier told the LA Times.

Medical institutions, including the prestigious Harvard Medical School and Stanford School of Medicine in the US, have agreed to help build the site alongside physicians, medical schools, hospitals, health organisations and public health professionals.

The aim is to become the largest source of medical information on the internet, with pages on 30,000 diseases and tens of thousands of drugs, as well as details of medical procedures and hospitals.

Information will be presented free of charge and as accessible as possible to the general public.

A preview version of the site has been launched, with the full site is due to go live by the end of the year.

The website is appealing for more doctors to come forward to work unpaid as editors, London's Daily Telegraph reports.

“In recent years, we have witnessed the benefit that a website like Wikipedia can have on all knowledge," said Mr Currier.

"With ongoing experimentation and guidance from the medical community, Medpedia could provide a similar benefit to the world in the specialised area of health and medicine.”

Medpedia uses collaborative software similar to that used by Wikipedia, but the two sites are not connected.