Amedeo Challenge | The Amedeo Challenge: HIV Medicine

HIV Medicine 2006 is the 14^th edition of a medical textbook that provides comprehensive and timely information on HIV treatment. It is one of the most exhaustive and complete books about HIV. The 800-page textbook - which is based on the collaborative experience of noted European HIV/AIDS specialists - can be accessed or downloaded (as a PDF file) free of charge, and covers such topics as acute HIV infection, HIV therapy, side effects, lipodystrophy, resistance testing, and AIDS-defining illnesses. It includes a comprehensive, in-depth index of established and new HIV drugs.

The beginnings of the HIV Medicine textbook go back to 1990 when Bernd Sebastian Kamps (BSK) published the first edition of a medical textbook named "AIDS 1991". For the 11^th edition in 2003, Christian Hoffmann joined the project as the new Editor-in-Chief, bringing with him more than two dozen new co-authors. In accordance with the Free Medical Information philosophy, Hoffmann and BSK published new chapters on the HIV Medicine website months before the printed book was available in bookstores.

Waving the copyright

On April 8, 2003, HIV Medicine 2003 was made available as a free PDF file and the copyright was waived for all languages but English and German. BSK and Hoffmann then issued a worldwide call to HIV colleagues, appealing them to translate the document into other languages, and offered the editors publication rights and all profits from resulting sales. The message was distributed to more than 170,000 subscribers to BSK's mailing lists Amedeo, FreeBooks4Doctors, and Free Medical Journals.

To benefit from this unprecedented editorial manoeuvre, would-be editors only needed to comply with a few conditions (see details), the most important of which were as follows:

The main page of the publication - be it the homepage of a Website or a book cover - had to reference the source of the information ("Adapted from www.HIVMedicine.com, by Hoffmann-Kamps et al.").

The authors of the individual chapters had to be referenced at the beginning of each chapter.

Translations had to reproduce the original documents faithfully. However, if national treatment guidelines, drug approval conditions or treatment-related issues specific to the editor's country differed from what was recommended or described in HIV Medicine, a corresponding note had to point out that difference.

As a result of this unusual offer, HIV Medicine was available in Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Russian by the end of 2003. A Persian edition was published in 2007. Translations into other languages (i.e., Vietnamese) are underway.

Sponsors

In early 2003, BSK outlined the new project to representatives of various pharmaceutical companies (Iris Wiesel from Roche; Jürgen Bufler from Pfizer; Thomas Fischer from Boehringer Ingelheim). All offered to pay a modest annual contribution in exchange for displaying their company logo on the website. In 2003, 2005, and 2006, Roche bought HIV Medicine textbooks to distribute freely at the European AIDS Conferences. Whereas the 2003 distribution in Paris was a normal event, the 2005 distribution in Dublin turned out to be spectacular. Roche had announced the distribution of the book on a voucher included in the conference bags. The result? The company's booth was literally besieged after the opening of the exhibition and hundreds of books were distributed within minutes.

Perspective

Today, HIV Medicine is one of the most used HIV/AIDS textbooks worldwide. Between October 2005 and October 2006, the various PDF versions of the 2005 edition (English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian) were downloaded more than 80,000 times. That translates into one download every 6 minutes - day and night - of every day of the year.

"We did anticipate this result but to see it happen is obviously satisfying," says BSK. "More importantly, such formidable download rates are a tremendous motivation for the authors who have accepted the responsibility to update their chapters annually." However, there is still an unmet desire. "Although most major languages are covered, one language is still missing - Chinese. There is clearly a need for a Chinese version, and there is a huge potential for financial gain for the translating group as well."

The 15^th edition of HIV Medicine will be published in autumn 2007. Colleagues from China: Have you received the message?

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