| Related sites for http://www.claudiax.net/US_medsearch.html |
| The_UK_National_Health_Service Information about what the NHS has to offer and how to access to these services. Includes addresses, contact details and maps for dentists, GP practices, hospitals, opticians, pharmacies and walk in c | | Central_Application_Service_for_Physician_Assistants A web-based application to educational programs. | | The_Center_of_Rehabilitation_Engineering_(CoRE) Kings College London unit offering taught courses and undertaking research into Rehabilitation Engineering. | | Respiratory_Care_Program_at_El_Centro_College Information about the profession, curriculum, admission process, faculty, financial aid, and contact information. Dallas, Texas. | | Chatelaine_com_Beauty_and_Fashion Fashion, style, health and beauty advice and shopping links from Canada's online lifestyle journal. | | Diamond_Way_Ayurveda Committed making Ayurveda and Ayurvedic lifestyle available to all who are interested in higher levels of well being. | | Lunatips New moon and full moon guide to grooming your hair, nails, skin, and gardens. A personal calendar guide and beauty program can be made for each individual. | | Redbook_Beauty_Expert Model Dayle Haddon, twice named to Harper's Bazaar's "Ten Most Beautiful Women" answers visitor questions on makeup tips, hair styles and recommended beauty supplies. | | Huna_Heritage_Foundation Perpetuates Huna culture. Features education, cultural programs, photos, board, news. Based in Juneau, Alaska. | | The_Tad_James_Companies,_LLC Offers study in the Huna teachings of Hawaii and New Zealand. Includes details on basic and advanced concepts, lineage, meditation, chanting and symbols. | | Alternative_Medicine A directory of therapeutic practices that are not considered to be a part of traditional or conventional medical treatment. | | Complementary_and_Alternative_Medicines_Institute_(CAMI) University of the Sciences in Philadelphia site features natural product monographs, courses, seminars. | | SavonAlternativeTreatments_com Provides information on alternative treatments, nutrition, a vitamin, mineral and drug index, and links. | | Urban_Health_News This is an online portal for information covering alternative health issues. | | NLP,_Hypnosis_and_Personal_Power Offers information about each one of the subjects. | | DukeMedicine_Health_News Article addresses the use of strength training to slow knee arthritis. Also describes the risk factor of knee osteoarthritis. | | JOINT_Osteoarthritis_Education_Programme Osteoarthritis education and a comprehensive information resource for heathcare professionals. Includes an overview, diagnosis, and management of OA. | | National_Institute_of_Arthritis_and_Musculoskeletal_and_Skin_Diseases_(NIAMS) Offers a handout about osteoarthritis. Includes what OA is, its affects, diagnosis, treatment, research, and illustrations. | | Osteoarthritis Information from the Arthritis Foundation. Includes symptoms, causes, diagnosis and treatment, science and research of OA, fact sheets, and alternative therapies. | | WebMD_Osteoarthritis_Health_Center In-depth information including symptoms, causes, and treatments. Includes a glossary. | | Confronting_Age-Related_Macular_Degeneration Duke Medicine Health News offers information about AMD. Included is a description, treatment options, and what you can do to keep your vision healthy. | | The_Clive_Project Care and support for younger people (under 65 years of age) with dementia (early onset dementia) and Alzheimer's Disease, and their families. | | Help_Me__My_Loved_One_Has_Frontal_Temporal_Dementia Seeks to provide communication strategies and or tips, as well as support, to those who have loved ones diagnosed with FTD. Contains a chat room wherein caretakers can meet to discuss specific topics | | AOL_Body_-_Osteoporosis Learn the bone basics, risk factors, prevention, coping with fractures, the importance of calcium, exercise for prevention, and bone myths. | | Calgary_Health_Region Offers a detailed description of osteoporosis, risk factors, and prevalence. | | Foundation_for_Movement_Intelligence FMI is an organization dedicated to promoting the world's best movement practices in the service of osteoporosis prevention and reversal. Sponsors Bones for Life education, training, and research in N | | OsteoDiet Features a blog containing a day to day living plan for women diagnosed with Osteoporosis. | | Osteoporosis_Treatment_Advice A blog that aims to give in-depth analysis of the osteoporosis syndrome and offers a forum for visitors to talk about their condition. | | Senior\'s_Health_Canada Guide to government of Canada's services for seniors and their families. | | Addenbrooke\'s_Hospital_-_Returning_to_Midwifery_Practice Offers courses for those who wish to rejoin the profession in order to re-register as a practitioner in the UK. Includes an online job pack in pdf format and a link to schemes for family-friendly stud | | Greenwich_University_-_Midwifery_(Pre-Registration)_BSc_Hons/DipHE Based in the Uk. Offers a three year direct-entry course at both diploma and degree levels. Features content and structure of the course and lists entry requirements. | | Massey_University_-_Midwifery_Programme Offers a Bachelor of Midwifery programme of three years duration. Also features postgraduate study as well as links to short courses on pharmacology and prescribing. Based in New Zealand with three re | | American_Public_Health_Association A large collection of public health books and other media available for purchase. | | Biotech_Online_Magazine Fosters collaboration between scientists by disseminating innovative interdisciplinary research at the interface between biotechnology and the related bio-sciences. | | Positive_Populations Examines health care issues in correctional systems, focusing on chronic infectious diseases; features links to newsletters, related sites, and topic updates. | | Quality_and_Safety_in_Health_Care International peer review journal for health professionals in quality improvement and patient safety. | | Specialty_Diets,_Inc_ Provides information, peer communication, specialty diets products, tools, and services to assist and support the management of medical diets such as Juvenile Diabetes and metabolic disorders. | | New_York_University_Department_of_Pharmacology Teaching of medical and graduate students, with research programs in normal growth and differentiation, development and pathology of the nervous system, and mechanisms of normal and abnormal functions | | pupilEyes Learn about vision and eye care. For people who want to study visual acuity and visual fields interactively on the web. By Jens G. Hetland, Professor, MD, Ph.Dd, Oslo, Norway. | | Natural_Products_Industry_Links_Center Directory for consumers. Internet network for the consumers of natural products. Searchable databases of web sites. |
|
U.S. Medical Searches Engines on the Web U.S. Government Non-Commercial Medical Search EnginesCompiled by Claudia Krenz, Ph.D. (datafriend @ gmail-.-com) PERPETUALLY UNDER CONSTRUCTIONI posted the first version of this page in the mid 1990s, a byproduct of working on a U.S. government-funded medical research grant: I'd found it helpful and others did as well.I list below interfaces to the 4 engines--out of nearly a dozen--that work the same way now--July, 2007--as they did then.The internet has changed (!) and the idea of a one-page interface no longer makes sense. If you're looking for personally relevant health information--which I assume you are or else you wouldn't have landed on this page--you're far more likely to find accurate information by searching several different sources and then comparing the results: take HIV as an example. If the results from different searches using different search engines all say that condoms always prevent infection, then you have a greater chance of being correct in believing that they do. However, you still need to think critically (just because computerized search results say something is so doesn't make it so). A few questions you might ask--in the context of maintaining your HIV-negative status--are: can I always ensure that my partner uses a condom? Are all condoms uniformly perfect, i.e., no defects? Even were they all perfect, could they be rendered imperfect between the time they leave the manufacturer and reach you, e.g., are they shipped in trucks so hot that the latex becomes brittle and so more subject to breaking? Suppose that you find that all your search results say that condoms are totally safe when used as directed--except for results from U.S. government non-commercial medical search engines (which proclaim that abstinence is the only way to prevent infection). What to think when confronted with conflicting information? The first thing, again, is to think critically. An obvious question to ask is whether or not you always get to decide whether or not to have . Now, in the 21st century, the very idea of "U.S. government" medical search engines makes no sense, for anyone looking for substantive uncensored medical information. I still go first to PubMed but wonder whether it, too, has become infested with advertising: in the present century the U.S. government has stifled the conclusions reached by its own scientists, has a health care system that, in the words of one prominent movie, is "sicko," has a higher infant mortality rate than any of the other G8 countries, throws money at religious groups which promise everything and are accountable for nothing, proposes anti-abortion legislation that doesn't even allow for a woman's health, and deliberately lied about air quality to the volunteers who, in 2001, worked to clear the wreckage of the former twin towers--to name a few prominent examples. Engine Index Notes Engine Index (the few remaining) NLM Health Organizations | NIH Clinical Trials | DHHS HealthFinder |Medicare |Government agencies1 and health professional societies around the globe are concerned by the caliber of health information being retrieved from the Internet by hordes of patients. There is reason for concern.2 Individual physicians (M.D.s) though, by and large, are generally clueless and not Internet savvy: they don't know how to guide their patients. And their patients, by and large, are not Internet savvy and so don't know where to look, other than where the media and marketers tell them. Clueless? Let me tell you how I 'hacked' my own medical records:Waiting in a private room, I saw a computer screen showing a login name and a blank field for password (oh no, I thought, couldn't be). Empiricist that I am, I typed in the login name as the password. Bingo. The void is filled by the many dot.coms hawking their sites as the best Internet source for current, relevant, and accurate health information. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the context of the low-carb high-fat U.S. dieting craze.Just as the number of post-Cherbnoyl cancers in Pripyat were predicted to rise long before they did--so, too, will the number of LCHF induced coronary cases rise, predictably increasing as the low-carb diets become even more popular: admission demographics will change somewhat as younger patients are admitted with arteries so clogged that they require emergency angioplasties. Numerous government agencies and health organizations have begun addressing this misinformation problem by building Internet sites that provide patients with current, relevant, and accurate health information. 3 Yet, by and large, these are individual, isolated, independent ventures, typically focusing on a single health topic. A patient with a question about, say, digestive disorders may, with a large portion of luck, wade through the dot.coms and locate an accurate truth oriented and factually accurate web site. But knowing about that site won't help when the question is about Aunt Sadie's asthma 4 or the baby's rapidly spreading rash. Expecting patients to filter out enough noise to obtain quality answers to their every health question is not reasonable. One size does notfit all when it comes to individual questions. One site would be more likely fit all by listing, on one page, a collection of search engines which, crawling databases of credible information,give patients the means to retrieve quality answers to a wide spectrum of health questions. It was the purpose of this page to provide such an interface. It still does. But there are many other medical search engines--all looking better designed than this clunker--in today's online world (go to any search engine and paste in "medical search engine"). imhoSince I still have your ear, so to speak, let me say one thing: BE CAREFUL. There is so much money to be made in the health industry--from medical search engines to the pharmaceuticals--that you'll be doing yourself a favor by reading all that's presented online as fact with a critical and skeptical eye: *always* ask yourself who is pushing what--where's the money?--who benefits if I believe that health fact x is true and behave according? IT's a JUNGLE OUT THERE. You want facts: be suspicious of the ones that are served to you. In summary, although a one-page interface was quite sensible last century, it is less so now, given the enormous text filtering power of the modern commercial search engines. You don't need medical expertise to learn more than you know now. Make your search more productive by not being intimidated by what you don't know. People reading outside their specialties won't be able to follow all they read--but they can always learn more than they knew before. Got an intimidating 8 million results after searching on a broad health topic like asthma? Skim the text summaries on your first search engine results page to harvest relevant terms: paste them into your search window to get a better, more focused results page. Put behaviorally, use your mouse to a) highlight terms--in your results page's text summaries --and then copy and paste theminto its search window; b) hit your keyboard's return key; stretch while a results page more focused on your question--you're the one making the decisions about the words and phrases on which to search--loads; c) learn something, repeat, learn more; can't assimilate any more? bookmark your search and come back to it when you can. Think both of words to include and to exclude from your search: exclude, for example, irrelevant commercial chatter or product promotions. Take the word "wonderful:" we all want to feel "wonderful" all the time; the word "wonderful" is a superlative often encountered in promotional content or advertisements: A rational searcher might reason that no serious--and so credible or expected to be factual, accurate--discussion of asthma would contain the word "wonderful:" credible product descriptions would list facts like symptoms and remedies (and leave the feeling wonderful part to Aunt Sadie after she became asymptomatic). Stumped by a medical term? I've yet to find one that onelook.comhasn't defined for me (there are many other dictionaries online: that is the beauty of the internet; it is or can be used as a reference library). Two other useful sites are NLM's Medical Encyclopedia and its MESH browser. In short, take advantage of the enormous text filtering power of the modern search engines. Never content yourself with a single search: use previous searches to inform subsequent ones. Select terms to include in and exclude from your search results (some engines allow searching on 10-plus terms). Don't be intimidated by all that you don't know: we all can learn more. Although a single one-page interface to sources of medical knowledge made sense back 7 years ago, it no longer does (both search engines and browsers have evolved into yet more useful tools). I hope you find the facts you are seeking. User DirectionsType your query into the form and hit the return key (or click the search button). Engines Health Organizations (also maintained by NLM) Enter term(s) Select term combination phrase exact words singular and plural forms word variants Fields (all is default) Organization Name/Acronym MESH Headings/Keywords Select records containing all of the words any of the words Only organizations with toll-free numbers Only organizations with services for the hearing impairedOnly organizations located in Search for particular organizations concerned with health and biomedicine. Enter your term(s); indicate whether you're searching for an exact phrase or some variant; select a field (not checking any yields the most hits; checking both yields the next most and checking MeSH terms, the least--beats me). Next select an organizational category (e.g., one with a toll free number), and then again specify the relationship between your terms. Click submit; you'll get one or more pages of organization names; click on a given one for more information (note that only some of these organizations have web pages). See the DIRLINE Fact Sheet for a more complete description of the databases and the medical subject headings page for help with specific terms. Clinical Trials (sponsored by NIH's Clinical Center)Enter term(s) and specify eligibility criteria:IncludeExclude This site comes with a help page and one on search tips. In addition to searching, you can browse by sponsor. Also provided is information about participating in, referring someone to, questions about, and what is a clinical trial. There is also a clinical trials page sponsored by NLM and NIH, which one would think would have greater coverage, being sponsored by two agencies; I'm not sure. HealthFinder (maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)Enter term(s) Words separated by a comma are interpreted as "or;" words separated by a space or enclosed in quotation marks are interpreted as a phrase. Click "Go" to initiate your search. Results consist of one or more pages listing web resources and organizations. These same categories are linked, in the other tools page, to toll free numbers and corresponding federal health clearinghouses. Medicare (there's also a lot of compiled information on their home page)Enter term(s) Words separated by a space or enclosed in quotation marks are interpreted as a phrase; words separated by a comma choke the engine; separating words by and does something but I don't understand what. Results consist of one or more pages of article titles with a brief abstracts; click on a title's URL to retrieve the article. For more information. check the glossary. Incidentally, the Medicare site indicates there is an "advanced search" engine--but I couldn't find it. Footnotes Take menorrhagia--a condition affecting up to a third of all women at one time or another--as an example: I found two abstracts representing two independent descriptive empirical studies--not experimental clinical trials--in which *all* subjects, although their lab test values fell within the normal range, reported cessation of problems within 3 months of taking some kind of thyroid supplement. Such information, freely available online, would likely be of interest to someone wanting to expand her existing knowledge with a literature review of the different treatment modalities studied by medical researchers (operationalized by appearing in medline abstracts). Would a woman with this problem a priori conclude a thyroid deficiency caused her problem (no, of course not). Should such a person conclude that, just because there haven't been many studies, that a treatment modality is ineffective (no, most academic research is sponsored by industry--and, in terms of pharmaceuticals, thyroid meds are dirt cheap).I've found that individuals are quite capable of sifting through information from diverse sources. There are, of course, other problems like uneven access to physicians. But might as well search a quality primary than a derivative secondary--technical information filtered through the eyes of someone who wants to sell you something and may or may not know what s/he's talking about--database. 1 My focus on U.S. medical search engines was a byproduct of having spent manyyears working on grants funded by the U.S. medical establishment; althoughI have found these databases useful on numerous occasions, my intention isnot to imply the superiority of said establishment. I value all input. One finds valuable information on sites maintained by professionalorganizations, other governments, and the U.N. (to name but several). However, it's a fair statement that the search engines listed on this pagewere generally thought of as established, respected, dependable,independently reviewed, quality-filtered--ones whose purpose is educationalrather than selling a product (nevertheless, see note 3 below: Caveat Emptor). 2I don't mean to suggest that there's nothing interesting or useful at commercial websites (or that non-commercial sites contain nothing of general interest): You can probably guess the opinions that 19th century EuroAmerican physicians had towards American Native medicine--but it's nice to hear them damn themselves in their own words (sort of like the microsfot trial). As far as the other major portals' health sites, let me illustrate by example: First, the old Apple/Excite health portal health greeted me with a banner ad blinking that I could lose 29 pounds in 2 weeks, then offering information about ideal body weight, tools for calculating bmi, ual health, and where you can buy seriously good vitamins, even a desert calculator (finally, answers to my questions about the Gobi and the Sahara)! Each click launched a new happier-thinner-younger banner ad; a search for vision yielded numerous links, including one to a "Shopping center [that] shines the light on products;" a search on "weight loss" retrieved over 6000 articles and one on "bunions," less than 30. AOL's Health Portal greeted its visitors similarly. A search for marijuana came up with two articles, neither dealing with health problems other than jail; a search on CBS' HealthWatch for "what my doctor was reading" about myopia yielded two articles, one about cataracts and nasal sprays and the other about fatigue and shortness of breath.Netscape's health portal stood shoulder-to-shoulder. A search on vision yielded--ranked by 4 stars and down--a division of Upjohn Pharmaceutica (3.5 stars), the health-by-topic feature of the Georgia Department of Public Health (3), the University of Washington Division of Gynecology and Oncology (1.5), and a Student Insurance Division of somethingorother (a meagre 1-star). Oh well, perhaps the Nouveauderm Moisturing Socks (for only $40) have medicinal properties that will help me understand.Seriously, have you ever wondered how much someone got paid to develop "health data" bases like these? So much for the upscale product sellers. Note that I haven't spoken of the sleazeballs, the scum trying to sell you sugar pills laced with arsenic or whatever (at great expense) to cure your arthritis--or the true believers, who, having found THE way, want to share it with you, be it a mantra or something that comes in a bottle, whether you want it or not. You'll encounter many upscale product sellers, sleazeballs and true believers on the Net: evidence suggesting that some online health sites deliberately violated their own privacy policies (Wired, 18 Feb 00) further makes me doubt their integrity. Caveat Emptor. 3 Also available in the peer-reviewed, grant-supported articles published in the research journals that make their way into databases like Medline is crap. We have all read stories about scientific misconduct.IMHO, sloppy research is a much bigger problem than falsified data. In research faculty positions and as an independent contractor, I have helped conduct numerous federally funded longitudinal medical research projects (AIDs, Alzheimer's, drug prevention and addiction, fibromyalgia, herpes, you name it). In the course of so doing, I have had the pleasure of working with many competent, brilliant, researchers, from whom I have learned much:I have though also had the misfortune to work with many incompetent ones. I've encountered longitudinal studies where researchers changed their scales without updating their scoring protocols and others where particular variables were changed, without anyone recording when. And I have corresponded with colleagues whose articles were rejected because of journal editors being pressured by others, e.g., the pharmaceutical industry. And then there are the studies where the data are fine but the statistical analysis is toast.Take the book The Bell Curve as a prominent example. Published in 1994 and widely panned by the scientific community, it remains influential in U.S. public attitudes and policy decisions (National Public Radio, Talk of the Nation, 21 Jan 99). In their first analysis, the authors wanted to predict poverty status--either above or below an official level--from a model consisting of 3 variables, which they called "age," "socioeconomic status," and "IQ" (in their book, they included printouts from their statistical analyses, which looked spiffy, all those numbers and all). They didn't notice that their model predicted none of the cases living below the poverty level correctly. Finally, keep in mind the old (and not totally undeserved) description of a medical research: a third of the patients got better, a third got worse, and the other rabbit ran away: Caveat Emptor.When push comes to shove though, I'm more confident in non-commercial, federal even, medical search results than I am in those from the sellers of soap, sleazeballs, and true believers. Caveat Emptor. nevertheless. 4And it's not just medical "research" that can pose problems: The original version of this page was long ago listed in the Open Directory (it's the first of 12 in the "Medical" category; its entry states that "Dr. Claudia Krenz provides search boxes and instructions for eleven specialist search tools, mainly maintained by the National Library of Medicine; its URL is http://www.srv.net/~msdata/US_medsearch.html--the URL is, alas, to an earlier, dated version of this page, to a file that no longer exists): Caveat Emptor. And, although no longer online, one M.D.--I am Ph.D.--thought it fit to plagiarizes an earlier version of this page, copying the code I had laboriously generated and substituting his name for mine as the author-- and, adding insult to injury, gummied up the substantive content with dancing Asclepiuses. Sheet. In another example, learningmedicinedotcom/about.html shows a better formatted--all my work makes obvious the fact that I am not a web "designer"--version of an earlier version of this page (my name is not listed on the main page although there is a link to an earlier, dated version of my resume, which includes my name, as well as dated physical and email addresses).Caveat Emptor. The point, again, is Caveat Emptor. Especially when it comes to health information. If it looks and quacks like a duck, it might be a duck, even with an "m.d." or "ph.d" appended. Consider the Crick, Watson, and Rosalind Franklin triad: she's fortunate in their only have stolen her ideas--she played Tesla to their Edison, Marconi, et al. In a way this can be explained as yet another footnote to--it was already implied in--Kuhn: the actual conduct of inquiry is a more-and-less messy business: Early 20th century U.S.S.R. biologist Lysenko had those disagreeing with him on some question of genetics, imprisoned. That the U.S.S.R. is no longer does not mean that crap like that doesn't still occur. Take T-PI at any institution, rearing up,roaring, slashing, fighting over the dwindling pile of grant carrion. And you should not be surprised that the funded research--which the peer-reviewed medical literatures is about--is unlikely to contain contemporary studies of long out-of-patent drugs. Does that mean pharamceuticals with the most recent pedigree are necessarily the best (don't assume "yes"). Caveat emptor--but usually searches of this kind of knowledge base provide more useful results than what the soap sellers and stars have to say. 5When I posted the first version of this page, information was ascendent. Now it is descendent (and sometimes devolving). Like many, this page was a small contribution ... There is no question that there were some things online that should not have been--and similarly for things that weren't but should have been public (very basic issue of the essential accountability of any government to its sovereign, the people--a relationship that's been flipped on its head in 2003: U.S. Sites are disappearing for no logical--nothing pertaining to "providing for the common defense" or protecting the water supply--reason. One example was the old U.S. FDA adverse reactions online database (here's its current form). The page clearly stated that it was an unordered list of adverse responses that had been reported to this and that; the page made no knowledge claims; the page was of potential public use--we are not all wired exactly the same and people do have, on occasion, strange reactions.The modern problem isn't limited to the actual conduct of inquiry being a footnote to Kuhn (logic-in-use, reconstructed logic (Kaplan); "sir karl, sir ronald, and the slow growth of soft psychology" (Cronbach and Meehl).There are other caveats to bear in mind besides eliminating references to condoms on a CDC HIV/AIDS "programs that work" page and stacking peer review with innumerates whose only qualification is ideological affiliation. And, of course, the normal publication lag means you'll never find anything cutting edge at its time in the peer-reviewed medical literature. In an anonymous essay released Oct. 20, 2003, a senior NIH scientist details the political interference in the scientific process of the institution. Under the watch of the Bush Administration, nominees for scientific panels face political loyalty tests, scientific manuscripts are reviewed by bureaucrats for findings embarrassing to the Administration, and NIH employees face losing their jobs--whistle blowing is another tried-and-true- method--as part of the President's outsourcing initiative. This senior scientist revealed that "staff morale at NIH is rock-bottom and the institution needs help" (Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Ranking Member, Committee on Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives). "No matter what country we live in, people who believe in free inquiry and the power of reason are all part of the same tribe" (Lowe, 2002). I was recently surprised to receive a snail mail question pertaining to this page (addressed to me simply as dr. krenz@ Nikiski, AK 99635). I answered it and thought to mention it here. U.S. citizens have a legal right to see their own medical records; physicians are though typically loath to turn them over to anyone but other physicians. For those without lawyers to enforce their rights, here's a strategy that once worked for me: I typed a request for my records from a recalcitrant physician and then had my bank notarize my signature. The notary's seal did not change the substance of my request; it simply made my request appear more official--enough that I did get copies of those records ... It would have been nice if the internet had turned out the way that seemed possible a decade ago. But it didn't. So, when you're searching for personally relevant health information, view what you find skeptically. |
|
