• Diseases and Conditions (sites designed for patients)
  • WebMD. Disease and Condition Health Centers.
    http://www.webmd.com/webmd_today/home/404?ourl=404
• The Merck Manual of Medical Information--2nd Home Edition.
  Merck Research Laboratories.
  http://www.merck.com/mmhe/index.html
• eMedicine Consumer Health. WebMD Health Center.
  http://www.emedicinehealth.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=60185
• Health & Disease information A to Z.
  Milton S. Hershey Medical Center College of Medicine. Penn State.
  http://www.hmc.psu.edu/healthinfo/
• InteliHealth. Harvard Medical School's Consumer Health Information. http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/7945/8218/213079.
  html?d=dmtHealthAZ&b=t
• PDRhealth. Disease Overviews. Physicians Desk Reference.
  Thomson Healthcare. 2005.
  http://www.gettingwell.com/patient_education/index.html

• Medical Information (designed for medical professionals)
  • Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy
    http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual/
  • Common Simple Emergencies. Buttaravoli, P.M. & Stair, T.O.,
    Longwood Information LLC. Washington, DC.
    http://www.ncemi.org/cse/contents.htm
  • Emergency Medicine on the Web. NCEMI.
    National Center for Emergency Medicine Informatics.
    http://www.ncemi.org/
  • Gray's Anatomy (a classic anatomy text)
    http://www.bartleby.com/107/
  • Medical images
    http://www.hon.ch/Media/anatomy.html

• Specialized Health Links
  • Women's Health links provided by Univerisity of Washington Seattle
    http://healthlinks.washington.edu/clinical/women.html
• About Herbs, Botanicals & Other Products. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has developed an authoritative database for oncologists of studies that review evidence about herbs, supplements, and other botanicals. Monographs include details on constituents of the herbal products, adverse effects, problems, and potential benefits.
  The references are annotated and excellent.
  http://www.mskcc.org/aboutherbs

• Professional Health Organizations
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov/
• National Institutes of Health http://www.nih.gov/

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• Authority of the source.
  • Who is the author? A professor? A doctor?
  • Are the author's credentials or professional affiliation given?
  • If the sponsoring agencies are universities. libraries, museums, hospitals, state
    or federal governments, or professional associations, they have higher credibility.
    
• Quality of the information.
  • Is it suitable for college level research?
  • If a full-text article, does it include a bibliography?
  • If statistics, does it tell you the source?
  • If polling data, does it tell you what the questions were,
    who the sample was, and how they were asked?
  • If it is a piece of research, is the research method documented and duplicatable?
  • Does it give you footnotes and bibliographies so that you can
    independently check quotes and facts?
    
• Currency of information.
  • How recent is the information itself?
  • How often is the site updated?
    
• Bias of information.
  • Does the site attempt to be neutral?
  • Is it sponsored by an advocacy organization?
    
• Intellectual responsibility for the site.
  • Is there a contact person you can e-mail with questions?
    
• Background links.
  • Does the site link to other sources of information?
    No reputable organization will position itself as the sole source
    of information on a particular topic.
    
• Clues from the domain name:
  • edu (or .ac in UK and Australia, u.ca in Canada) is educational,
    usually a college or university, so it should contain credible, unbiased information.
    On the other hand, if the URL also contains /~,
    it is probably the work of a single user and thus could be the work of anyone.
    This /~ clue applies to all types of domains, of course, not just .edu, and
    you should look to see if the owner offers credentials to justify his/her
    claim to be knowledgeable.
  • .gov indicates government of some sort and as such should be reliable,
    but governments are usually not on the cutting edge and are naturally cautious.
  • .com is a commercial site and is likely to be trying to sell you something.
    The information on it may be highly biased or quite reputable.
  • .net is independent, and the quality of content is entirely speculative.
  • .org is a not-for-profit organization and should be beyond reproach,
    but .org sites have been known to be fronts for commercial operations.

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  MEDICAL CASES FOR TEACHING

• Martindale's Health Science Guide, 2006. The "Virtual" Medical Center.
  http://www.martindalecenter.com/Medical.html
• The Virtual Health Care TeamTM
  is a collection of interdisciplinary cases sponsored by the School of Health-Related
  Professions and the School of Medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia
  http://www.vhct.org/index.shtml.
• "The Case of the Older Shoulder"
  (this server is down--will reconstruct the site eventually)

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