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The Internet and widespread digitalization of medical information have profoundly
changed the availability of medical information. It is possible to find information
essentially on any medical topic at little or no cost. The difficulty is that
the Internet is completely unregulated; it has no central quality review and
therefore it is very easy to obtain misleading and even fraudulent medical
guidance. Northeast Montana Family Medicine maintains guide to medical information
on the Internet as an aid to patients searching for information. Our purpose
is to give you some direction toward credible sources. We will also review
information that you may find and send to us.
There are 3 different ways medical information appears on the Web. These are:
symptom guides or ways to look up particular medical symptoms, specific Web
sites devoted either to medicine in general or particular medical topics and,
finally, RSS feeds. Each of these are discussed below. Also provided are links
to sources that have been used at Northeast Montana Family Medicine and have
been reviewed by Dr. Council.
Symptom guides are decision trees intended to guide you to a diagnosis and
to suggest the urgency of direct medical evaluation, or in other words how
soon you need to be seen by the doctor. Two excellent site of this nature are
the following:
The first of these is written and maintained by the American Academy of Family
Physicians. The second is written and maintained by Mayo Clinic. Dr. Council
has reviewed these sites personally and recommends them. Another site is:
This, however, is maintained by the National Health Service in the United
Kingdom ( England) and is slightly more difficult to use than the sites above. A site dedicated to assessing health risk is http://www.yourdiseaserisk.com
Web sites that are devoted to specific medical topics or general medicine
are numerous. Some of these are maintained by academic organizations, some
are commercial sites and some are maintained by drug companies. An annotated
list of these is as follows:
This is a commercial site with lots of advertisement. The information is reliable.
Has discussion groups led by doctors in specific fields and guides to choosing
insurance plans and doctors.
Health direct Internet searching, Drug information, links to other health
sites, medical encyclopedia, considerable in house medical content and search
capability for the Internet at large but in a medically directed way.
A medical search engine only. Not commercial but a not for profit health information
portal supported by the Swiss government. Attempts to provide sources that
are reviewed as trustworthy and not fraudulent. Does not provide its own medical
content. Has the interesting feature of allowing searches for images or pictures
of medical conditions such as rashes.
A health content and search engine site based in the United Kindgom. Search
returns are limited to sites and information that have been reviewed by a board
of doctors in the United Kingdom. Includes its own medical content which seems
very high quality.
A medical search engine only, no health content. Fast. Allows choice of focusing
search only to noncommercial domains (.gov, .edu, .org, ac.uk). Also has a
search capability directed only at images or pictures off medical conditions.
A noncommercial site offering medically filtered search, question/answer sessions
with doctors which are archived and searchable and some in house medical content.
The question/answer archive and search results are very well organized.
A commercial site dedicated to providing information about drugs---includes
reliable date but has numerous ads for alternative or natural agents. Does
include a capability to check interactions between drugs and a pill identification
feature.
A medical encyclopedia site based in the United Kingdom. Has extremely extensive
links to credible information elsewhere on the net; written by a team of British
doctors.
Extremely well done health information site from the National Institutes of
health and U.S. National Library of Medicine. Has extensive in site medical
content including drugs, surgery videos and clinical trials information. A special site for children within the NIH system is http://www.nichd.nih.gov
A commercial site providing health information written by a large board of
doctors. Content is searchable, search restricted to the site itself, not the
Internet. Content is displayed in outline form initially, allowing quick overview.
Has a guide to symptoms; numerous ads.
A consumer health information site maintained by the drug manufacturer Merck.
Content primarily based on the textbook The Merck Manual. Has links to a visual
guide to medicine and anatomy known as ADAM. No ads.
Provides links to information on any medical topic entered. Links are primarily
to academic or government sites but also to links on the entered topic found
by Yahoo and Looksmart. This site is extremely rich in links to clinical pictures
of medical conditions. Has no medical content of its own; no ads. Maintained
by the Hardin Library for Health Sciences at the University of Iowa.
A search engine intended to be specific for health topics. Tends to produce
results from the sites above and, thus, yield credible information. No self
maintained content. No ads.
Another health focused search engine. Groups results into categories such
as symptoms versus treatments. Provides specific links to message boards focusing
on the topic searched. Few ads.
A commercial site featuring its own content. Has thousands of original articles
written and reviewed by doctors about medical topics and is searchable. Is
paired with a similar site aimed at medical professionals. Has some ads but
not many. Owned by WebMD.
Site devoted to searching and organizing message boards about particular medical
topics and conditions. These are discussion groups involving patients, not
doctors. This site links to the health content of WebMD. A few ads.
RSS feeds are the third approach to finding medical information on the Internet.
RSS stands for “really simple syndication” but these words do not
describe this technology well. Many Internet sites provide continuous streams
of brief summaries (RSS feeds) of their contents using specialized software
known as RSS software. Other programs known as RSS readers collect and display
this information. RSS feeds can be displayed by Internet browser programs individually---the
Firefox browser does this well. Other programs allow collecting and organizing
RSS feeds by topic and source. These programs can sit inside an Internet browser
or be completely free standing.
An example of an RSS reader program that sits inside the Firefox browser is
PLUCK (http://pluck.com), which is free. An
example of a free standing program is Feed Demon, which costs $30.00 by Internet
download. These tools would be useful for following the latest developments
in a specific chronic condition.
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