We are drowning today in medical information -- and,
by and large, that’s a
wonderful thing.
It was only a generation or so ago that it was
considered radical when a bunch of Boston feminists
dug out the kind of information we feel entitled to
today and published the first "Our Bodies,
Ourselves," a nitty-gritty, user-friendly medical
guide for women.
Now, 62.6 million Americans -- 37 percent of those
who use the Internet -- mine it for medical
information. In just a year, from August, 2004 to
August, 2005, visits to medical websites grew a
whopping 23 percent, according to ComScore Media
Metrix, an Internet audience measurement company
based in Reston, VA.
With such a surfeit, the challenge these days is to
find trustworthy medical information amid all the
profit-driven, misleading, or just plain erroneous
stuff on the Net.
With 350 big medical sites to choose from, and
thousands more lesser sites, zooming in efficiently
on reliable information takes some practice. On the
other hand, that’s what I do all day.
So here, without further ado, are my favorite sites
-- the ones I use frequently and trust for
carefully-vetted, understandable information:
Ø
The
government actually does a wonderful job on medical
websites. The best site by far for researching any
disease -- and the only site you really need if
you’re trying to get the basics in a few hours – is
www.nih.gov, run by the National Institutes of
Health.
Ø
From
the main NIH site, you can get reasonably detailed
information on many diseases, plus links to other
excellent government sites such as www.clinicaltrials.gov,
which lets you plug in your disease and state and
get information on studies you can join.
Other good government sites for researching diseases
and general health information are
www.medlineplus.gov, which is run by the NIH and
the National Library of Medicine,
www.healthfinder.gov, put together by the
department of Health and Human Services, and
www.cancer.gov, run by the National Cancer
Institute. A more esoteric site that requires some
heavy slogging is
www.ahrq.gov, run by the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality, part of HHS; it’s not too
user-friendly, but has excellent reviews
of research on selected topics.
And if you’re really a medical junkie, or have
already mastered the basics of your disease and want
to read medical studies, try PubMed,
www.pubmed.gov, a search service from the
National Library of Medicine that provides access to
more than 11 million citations in medical journals.
Once you find a journal article, you can usually get
the abstract free; if you
want the whole text, you can go to the journal in
which it appeared, though you may have to register
and pay.
Among the nongovernmental sites, my favorite is
Consumer Reports’ Medical Guide,
www.consumerreportsmedicalguide.org. Much of the
information here is free, though for some of the
specific material, you have to pay $19 a year or
$4.95 per month. The guide can help you sort out
with your doctor whether you need a mastectomy or
lumpectomy for breast cancer, for instance, or
whether you need to treat your prostate cancer or
not.
(Consumer Reports also compiles a list of what it
deems the 20 best sites on the web at
www.healthratings.org.)
The country’s most popular medical site is WebMD,
www.webmd.com, which also ranks number one for
quality on Consumer Reports’ top 20 list. In the
interest of full disclosure: I have a contract with
WebMD to publish my columns. That said, I find the
site too busy visually. On the other hand, there’s a
good reason the site is popular -- it’s extensive
and quite user-friendly.
Among the sites run by teaching hospitals, my
favorite is the Mayo Clinic’s,
www.mayoclinic.com. It has clear information on
many diseases and carries the two seals of approval
you should look for on any medical website, one from
Health on the Net,
www.healthonnet.org, and the other from URAC,
www.urac.org. Both of these independent,
non-profit organizations use specific criteria to
vet information on health websites. At URAC, website
creators have to pay $7,000 to go through the
accreditation process, though this does not assure
accreditation. Health on the Net does not charge.
Many medical schools also have websites, though some
of these are better at promoting their own doctors
or research than giving general medical information.
One good one is Harvard’s: Go to
www.hms.harvard.edu and then click on "consumer
information," then "intelihealth." The site is owned
by Aetna, Inc. but Harvard Medical School has
editorial responsibility. The site has encyclopedic
health information, as well as reviews of breaking
medical news stories, an "ask-the-expert" feature
that answers selected e-mailed questions and a
number of interactive tools.
If it’s drug information you’re looking for, skip
the US Food and Drug Administration’s site, because
it’s not very helpful and go to
www.PDRHealth.com, which gives consumer-friendly
information based on FDA-approved information taken
from the Physicians’ Desk Reference, the doctors’
bible of drug information. Or try
www.safemedication.com, run by the American
Society of Health-System Pharmacists.
For comparisons of cost, safety and effectiveness of
some commonly prescribed drugs, check out Consumer
Report’s relatively new offering, Best Buy Drugs,
www.crbestbuydrugs.org.
Three final thoughts:
Ø
Steer
clear of sites that promote a particular product,
treatment or
doctor.
Ø
Check
out your health plan on the web. Some offer medical,
as well as
insurance, information. Blue Cross Blue Shield of
Massachusetts,
www.bcbsma.com, for instance, has good,
interactive material, though you have to cruise
around a bit to find it.
Ø
And
visit -- with caution -- the patient advocacy groups
for whatever
disease you’re interested in. Some of the
information may be biased, but visiting these sites
may at least suggest questions to ask your doctors
about new treatments. Many patient advocacy sites
also guide you to support groups.
Bottom line? It can be a jungle out there in medical
cyberspace. But
if you stick to the reputable sites, you can quickly
become a very savvy
patient.\
Judy Foreman’s past
columns can be found on
www.myhealthsense.com
