Medical Information on the Web

by Irene E. McDermott

When you or your loved one gets a diagnosis, the first thing you will want to do is get some current information. Here are some resources that will give you a quick overview of your situation.

The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy

http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual
When doctors and nurses get sick, they turn to this standard of diagnosis. Merck offers their 17th edition, published in 1999, for free. Completely searchable, this online publication lists the causes, symptoms, and prognosis of just about everything that can go wrong with you. It also covers mental conditions, pediatrics, and infectious disease! Reading disease descriptions in the Merck, I always start to feel a little funny, as if I were developing the symptoms of all the ailments in the book.

The Merck Manual Home Edition

http://www.merckhomeedition.com
Is the regular Merck written medical terms that are too incomprehensible? Search the Home Editionfor the same great information translated into terms that even I can understand. Choose the plain text site, or have fun with the cool, interactive version.

MayoClinic.com

http://www.mayohealth.org/home
The famous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota offers this resource, which gives reliable, general information about many different ailments and conditions. In addition to clear information about disease, MayoClinic.com offers healthy lifestyle planners. Get started today reducing stress, stopping smoking, and getting your weight under control. This is a great place to start!

InteliHealth

http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH
John Hopkins University has joined with Clinical Reference Systems, Ltd. to bring you InteliHealth. This site aims to offer you the Web's most comprehensive collection of consumer health information from the best possible sources. Value added features include patient drug information and access to the latest mainstream health news. Funding comes from Aetna U.S. Healthcare, a national managed health care company.

MEDLINEplus Health Information

http://medlineplus.gov
The National Library of Medicine has assembled its resources onto one attractive portal designed for general health consumers. Find information here on conditions, diseases, drugs, and wellness. Use their medical dictionary to translate those incomprehensible medical terms. You may also jump directly from this site to ClinicalTrials.gov (http://ClinicalTrials.gov), the medical research program from the National Institutes of Health.

MORE GENERAL CONSUMER HEALTH RESOURCES

American Medical Association

http://www.ama-assn.org
This site features a free Doctor Finder, and the full text of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), This site also links to information about specific health topics such as HIV, women's health, and migraines.

HealthAnswers

Orbis Broadcast Group developed this site, which offers very general information on many health subjects. Good for browsing, but if you are suffering a life-threatening illness, you will want to look at sources with more depth.

Healthtouch: Online for Better Health

http://www.healthtouch.com
Medical Strategies, Inc. assembled this page of links primarily to pharmaceutical and drug information. One particularly valuable service is the link to drug information from Micromedex, Inc, a comprehensive, proprietary prescription and over-the-counter drug database.

HealthWatch

http://www.swmed.edu/home_pages/library/consumer.htm
HealthWatch is a Public Service of the Office of News and Publications & the Library at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

HealthWeb Consumer Health

http://healthweb.org/index.cfm
This resource is a collaborative effort between the Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation's HealthWeb project. It aims to be a quality filter of health information for consumers, providing access and helpful commentary on health sites. It has a clear, easy-to-navigate format that includes links to Internet resources by ailment, medical publications, and links to government, non-profit, and professional health organizations and associations.

Wellness Web

http://wellweb.com
Executive Editor Lenore Howe tries "to put the HEART back in health care" by assessing and assembling information about clinical trials, community health, drug dosages and compliance, treatment options and research, how to select a health care provider, reports on dozens of illnesses and conditions, tips about healthy lifestyles, and alternative treatments.

Internet Mental Health

http://www.mentalhealth.com
Bodily distress aint the only kind of illness out there. While treating the body, don't forget the mind. Canadian psychiatrist Phillip W. Long, M.D. funds and runs this site, with very complete mental health information. Find information on common mental disorders, read magazine articles, and even diagnose yourself, using the site's online evaluation tools. This is a great place to start for all kinds of mental distress.

DISEASE DIRECTORIES

Achoo Internet Healthcare Directory

http://www.achoo.com/main.asp
Achoo is owned and managed by the Canadian MNI Systems Corporation. Achoo adopts a comprehensive interpretation of "health". They include links to information about all aspects of healthcare, such as clinical medicine, alternate medicine, as well as the business aspects of medicine. This is a cool site, but never attains much depth.

Hardin Meta Directory of Internet Health Sources

http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/index.html
Eric Rumsey compiled this site for the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences at the University of Iowa. He writes, "As the name "meta directory" implies, Hardin MD is a "list of lists" - Its purpose is to provide easy access to comprehensive resource lists in health-related subjects. It includes subject listings in large "one-stop-shopping" sites, such as Yahoo!, and also independent discipline-specific lists. Hardin MD subject pages indicate the length of lists in each subject, making it easy to see at a glance which lists are most comprehensive - These are often not the lists from the "one-stop-shopping" sites, but those developed by people within the field, which are well-known and frequently cited within the field, but not well-known outside it."

Librarian's Index to the Internet Health and Medicine: Diseases & Conditions

http://www.lii.org/search/file/diseases_and_conditions
The incomparable LII brings you this extensive list of links to annotated site selections, chosen by librarians. If LII lists it, you know it is an interesting and reliable resource.

Yahoo! Health: Diseases and Conditions

http://dir.yahoo.com/Health/Diseases_and_Conditions
No matter what your complaint (including shyness), find Web resources about it here in Yahoo!'s comprehensive list.

IN-DEPTH RESOURCES AND LITERATURE

Medscape.com

http://www.medscape.com
Designed for clinicians as well as consumers, Medscape.com offers the Web's largest collection of free, full-text clinical medicine articles enhanced with keyword searches, graphics, annotated links to Internet resources, and more. 12 easily searchable databases including MEDLINE, Medscape's full-text articles, news, patient information, medical images, and much more. This site is free, but requires registration.

PubMed

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
The National Library of Medicine maintains the premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, and veterinary medicine. Called MEDLINE, this resource contains bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 4,000 biomedical journals. Use the PubMed interface to search for abstracts of the latest research on what ails you. Warning: these articles are written in "research-ese" and so can be difficult to understand. Keep a medical dictionary on hand at all times for the translation.

WebMedLit

http://www.webmedlit.com
This site tracks 23 well-known medical journals on the Web, including the Journal of Clinical Oncology and the New England Journal of Medicine. Articles, some with full text, are arranged by subject into nine categories: AIDS/Virology, Cardiovascular, Cancer/Oncology, Dermatology, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Medical Economics, Neurology, and Women's Health.

Internet Grateful Med

http://igm.nlm.nih.gov
Internet Grateful Med, like its cousin PubMed, offers free access not only to MEDLINE, but to AIDSLINE, AIDSDRUGS, AIDSTRIALS, PREMEDLINE and others: eleven medical journal citation indexes in all. Choose between the two based on which search interface you prefer.

OTHER MEDICAL RESOURCES

InteliHealth: Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary

http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIPN000/9276/9276.html?k=tnavx9276x9276
Just what is "adipose tissue", anyway? Find out using the online version of the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary, brought to you by InteliHealth.

PDR.net for Consumers

http://consumer.pdr.net/consumer
The Physician's Desk Reference is where doctors turn to decide what medicine to give you. For the price of registration, search this database to learn what medical professionals know about the drugs that you are taking.

RxList.com

http://www.rxlist.com
This Internet drug index was founded and is maintained by Neil Sandow, Pharm.D. Director of Pharmacy for several San Francisco area hospitals. RxList lets you search by drug name, imprint code, or keyword, then offers direct access to Taber's Medical Encyclopediafrom the result page.

OnHealth Medicine Checker

http://interactive.onhealth.com/conditions/resource/pharmacy/checker/index.asp
OnHealth brings you this drug interaction checker, based on a database from Multum Information Services, Inc. Use the checker to mix as many medicines as you like to see what will happen.

CANCER: WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

CancerNet

http://cancernet.nci.nih.gov
This site, from the National Cancer Institute, a component of the National Institutes of Health, is the most current, credible, and comprehensive information center about cancer available on the Web. Most information on CancerNet comes from PDQ, NCI's comprehensive cancer database. CancerNet offers information about all the different types treatment, clinical trials, genetics, causes, risk factors, prevention, testing, coping and more.

CANCERLIT

http://cancernet.nci.nih.gov/canlit/canlit.htm
Use this interface to search the National Library of Medicine's CANCERLIT bibliographic database. Topics include breast cancer, skin cancer, and gynecologic cancers. A typical entry will include the title, author, source, and abstract of a recently published article or meeting abstract. Each monthly edition contains only those citations and abstracts that were added to CANCERLIT on that topic during the current month. The last 6 monthly editions of each topic are also available at the site.

American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO)

http://www.asco.org
Here is where oncologists worldwide share their latest findings. Look here to find a specialist in your particular cancer. Also, search their article database for abstracts about the results of the latest experimental treatments.

OncoLink

http://oncolink.upenn.edu
Located at the University of Pennsylvania, OncoLink is often cited as one of the best resources anywhere on the Web. Although much of the physician-specific information is copied directly from the NCI site (such as CANCERLIT), it is presented in a way that is sometimes faster and easier to navigate. The patient-specific information on the financial aspects of cancer treatment and the frequently asked questions section is exceptional. It provides a large collection of support groups, peer-reviewed journals, hospitals, and other online references.

American Cancer Society

http://www.cancer.org
The American Cancer Society (ACS) site targets the most common cancer types, such as lung, breast, and colon. It features modules on prostate and breast cancer.

Medicine On-Line

http://www.meds.com
This is a commercial site published by UltiTech, Inc. of Stratford, Connecticut, and sponsored by the drug companies Glaxo Wellcome Oncology/HIV and Parmacia & Upjohn. Medicine On-Line offers medical information and education about cancer, including Medline literature searches, Daily Oncology News Digest, cancer discussion groups, and reports from medical meetings.

CanSearch

http://www.cansearch.org/canserch/canserch.htm The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, a not-for-profit support organization sponsors this site. It attempts to bring together psychosocial resources for cancer patients and their families by providing links to Web sites around the world. The section describing clinical trials is very well done and would be of value to any patient with newly diagnosed cancer.

CLINICAL TRIALS

ClinicalTrials.gov

http://www.clinicaltrials.gov
The U.S. National Institutes of Health, through its National Library of Medicine, has developed ClinicalTrials.gov to provide patients, family members and members of the public current information about clinical research studies. Browse trials by broad disease heading, or alphabetically, by precise condition. Or, do a focused search that allows you to limit by geographical location.

CenterWatch Clinical Trials Listing Service

http://www.centerwatch.com
Use this site to find information related to a variety of clinical trials, as well as new drug therapies recently approved by the FDA. CenterWatch also offers a patient notification service in which they will email you when a new clinical trial in your area of interest is submitted to them, or when the FDA approves new drugs that might fit your profile. Use this site as an adjunct to the federal government site, above.

CancerNet: Clinical Trials Search

http://cancernet.nci.nih.gov/trialsrch.shtml
Got cancer? Search for a clinical trial on this National Cancer Institute database. Query by cancer type, treatment type, clinical trial phase, and, most important, by geographic location. Get contract information for the nation's experts in your type of cancer. Call them up and ask them what to do.