The site's main objective is to disseminate
medical scientific information through the Internet, working primarily
in continuous medical education (CME) and medical literature. Its information
services are divided into the following areas:
Specialties: this section groups
information resources into 15 main areas: AIDS, cardiology, infectious
diseases, health administration, medical practice, mental health, oncology,
orthopedics, pediatrics, pharmacotherapy, primary care, pneumology, surgery,
urology and ginecology/obstetrics.
News: this section lists daily short
medical news published by the specialized press.
Journals: this section allows access
to 29 full-text medical journals, such as the American Heart Journal, Medical
Tribune, Clinical Psychiatry News and many others, includig eight on-line
journal produced by Medscape itself.
Patient Information: this section
has many instructional texts and links to other medical sites, so that
doctors can pass to their patients information about prevention, diagnosis
and treatment in many medical areas.
Examination Room: one of the most
interesting sessions, it contains, among other things, the Question of
the Day, about some clinical problem, the PicTour, a presentation and solution
of clinical cases (with images, clinical history and questions about diagnosis
and treatment) and the Journal Club Forum, a presentation of important
medical articles, with on-line discussion.
PicTour, a clinical
case presentation with images, which the user must solve.
Library: contains diverse information
for the doctor, such as "Clinical Pearls" (a pratical collection of tips),
and illustrated Medical Procedures and Clinical Orientations.
Services: this section has many
resources for information location and browsingg, such as research articles,
bibliographical search in MEDLINE, the Electronic Library (with 40,000
medical titles) and the Career Center (with job announcements in the medical
and nursing areas).
Other Medscape sections increase to new
heights the diversity and richness of information in the site, such as
Book Reviews and Clinical Calculator. The former is a interesting page,
containing several form-based programs which allow the calculation of clinical
parameters in many specialties, in a interactive way. The user fills the
input values, and, by clicking on a button, obtains immediately the answer,
which is usually numerical. In the following example, the program calculates
the probability of acute myocardial infarction of a patient, based on data
about ST segment elevation and depression, in presence of a left
bundle block (LBBB).
On-line calculator
for medical decision support calculations.
Another interesting section, called CME
Center, lists all resources which grant CME (continous medical education)
credits (a serious business in the USA), and also a a calendar of all programmed
CME events.
Medscape has also on-line discussion forums
about many themes, through email, with the participant's contributions
displayed on-line. Although physicians suffer from a chronic lack of time,
it is easy to predict that this form of electronic discussion will grow
in the future, and will include support to medical care (such as the on-line
discussion of difficult cases, for example), thus leading to a kind of
"low-cost telemedicine".
Another good resource is MedPulse, a notification
service by e-mail, which you can receive every week in your house with
all Medscape news and site modifications.
Obviously, someone has to pay for such
an expensive service and the site survives from advertising from pharmaceutical
companies and other Internet medical sites. Advertising is discrete and
in good taste, and does not disturb the information flow and visualization,
like in other medical sites which I have visited.
In conclusion, Medscape is an absolutely
vital, high-quality resource, standing between the five best medical sites
in Internet. By our evaluation, Medscape deserves a maximum grade.
Site of the Month
MedScape
Medscape is one
of the most important and visited medical sites in the World Wide Web (WWW).
With more than 400,000 registered users and with a growth rate of 4,000
new users per week, it is well known worldwide, especially in the
USA, where it is said that 80% of the doctors with Internet access visit
the site regularly. It is necessary to register before entering the site
by answering a on-line form, but the process is free of charge, up to now.
http://www.medscape.com
One of the greatest attractions in Medscape
site is the possibility of making searches by using keywords. The user
can choose from many databases:
Efficient
Searches
The search results are impressive. I liked
particularly the enormous full-text article database, which permits a efficient
and relevant search in a very short time. MedScape gives free access to
the article's texts, which can be saved to your disk or printed immediately.
The MEDLINE search section has promised to provide links to available on-line
texts but this resource is still incipient. When it works, it will be a
revolution in the access to medical information (see Bibliographical
Research in the Internet, Intermedic, Issue 2).
The richness of information provided by Medscape,
together with its free-of-charge access, allow us to say that this is simply
one of the best sites in medical Internet. Site navigation is extremely
easy and intuitive, working like a large and organized "message board",
with resources for all requirements and personal tastes. Medscape has accomplished
something which I find impossible in Brazil: they were able to convince
authors to write a good number of high-quality papers to be offered exclusively
on the Internet.
Site
EvaluationPublished on: 22.Feb.1998
Published by:
Center for Biomedical
Informatics
State University of Campinas,
Brazil
© 1997 Renato
M.E. Sabbatini Sponsored by:
Searle
Brasil