Medicine and health are among the most popular topics for Web surfers, but an Internet entrepreneur, James Currier, says the current offerings are inadequate. He’s developed Medpedia, a free online medical encyclopedia that is going live Tuesday, to address what he views as the sector’s shortcomings.

However, unlike Wookieepedia, Lostpedia and most social encyclopedias, Medpedia has limitations on submissions. Only trained professionals will be able to write and edit pages on the Web site, and all contributors will have individual author pages detailing their qualifications and backgrounds.

“We haven’t yet brought the basic Web 2.0 infrastructure to the medical industry,” Mr. Currier said. “Medicine is one of the least developed areas of the Internet, but could be the most transformed by it.”

A plethora of Web sites like WebMD, MayoClinic.com, Healthline and Revolution Health already exist to help consumers decipher their symptoms, read about their diseases and learn about treatment options. Mr. Currier is aiming to build the most complete database of information from medical professionals and combine it with forums for consumers and patients to share treatment stories, raise questions and directly engage with the physicians editing Medpedia’s content.

So far, the project has garnered some significant support from the medical community. Mr. Currier said Harvard Medical School, the National Health Service in England, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, are among the medical organizations that have donated more than 7,000 pages of content to Medpedia. Some institutions, including the N.H.S., the American Heart Association and the University of Michigan Medical School, will encourage staff and faculty members to contribute to Medpedia.

Before Medpedia, Mr. Currier worked with Harvard professors to found Tickle.com. Tickle provided Web-based self-assessment tests in personality, sex and career topics and was sold to Monster.com in 2004. Mr. Currier, who is currently the chief executive and founder of a San Francisco technology incubator, Ooga Labs, is financing the development of Medpedia himself.

He has high hopes for the potential of the service to revitalize attitudes toward health care. Patients need to take more active roles in the health care process, he said, which is why he wants to eventually add procedural guides to help patients prepare for surgeries and treatments, recommended questions for patients to ask their doctors, average procedural costs and informational videos. Medpedia will also contain debate pages housed separately from the neutral information pages. That way, physicians can engage in academic dialogues about hot issues such as whether or not local drinking water should be supplemented with folic acid.

“The need for medical literacy is only increasing,” Mr. Currier said.

Medpedia could also play a role in revamping the physician referral system. The site has a built-in social networking directory modeled after LinkedIn for medical professionals to help patients get a broader view of specialists in their geographical areas.

Medpedia’s approach will be appealing to the new crop of doctors finishing their residencies, who have grown up on the Internet and are used to communicating this way, he said. “They’re going to get credit for it and get recognized in an international medical community for their contributions,” he said. “It can also be used as a platform for publishing journals –- this will be the place to put out information and knowledge.”