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How to Find Medical Information on the Internet: A Print and Online Tutorial for the Healthcare Professional and Consumer

By Diane K. Kovacs and Ann L. Carlson
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Library Solutions Press
Copyright 2000
128 pages
ISBN: 1-882208-27-7
$60.00 Reviewed by: Pamela Barnard, MSLS, AHIP

Authors and Disclosures

Posted: 02/06/2001

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Introduction

As the Internet grows in popularity as a resource for medical information, and since the research skills that individuals bring to their quests are as diverse as the quality of information they will find, efforts to provide structure and encourage critical evaluation skills are sorely needed.

How to Find Medical Information on the Internet: A Print and Online Tutorial for the Healthcare Professional and Consumer tries to be more than just a compilation of useful Web sites, and, for the most part, it succeeds for both the healthcare professional and the consumer.

Both authors are well qualified to address their subject. Diane Kovacs is a nationally recognized Internet trainer and author, moderator of the NETTRAIN discussion list for Internet trainers, and principal instructor of Web-based distance Internet workshops. Both Kovacs and Ann Carlson have backgrounds in library science, which becomes evident in their emphasis on evaluation of Web sites.

Consistent with many "hands-on" books about the Web, this book is not lengthy and has plenty of white space and special features, such as "highlight," "tip," and "detail" boxes. These all are in keeping with the guidelike, or tutorial, nature of the book, as indicated by the title, and there is enough content to be worthwhile.

The price of the book might be a bit steep if it weren't for the fact that the reader is also paying for access to a Web version of the same information, including updates to any Web addresses that have changed since the book was published. The reader has 6 months of access to the online version via a personal password (which the reader must obtain by July 1, 2001).

In addition, the reader can use the online version to complete the exercises and receive feedback from the authors, certainly not a feature of most tutorials.

The book is divided into 3 instructional units, the first of which provides an excellent background to the new Web user. This first section summarizes the basics very well, especially for the casual user who has never had an introduction to the Web, its basic conventions (such as the structure of a URL), or its protocols (http vs ftp vs telnet). The introduction of medical metasites in the third exercise will be useful to those users new to the Web. Especially noteworthy are the discussions on quality, evaluation strategies, privacy, and security.

Unit Two focuses on the Internet as a communication tool. The basics of email "netiquette" and jargon are covered. The first exercise is probably the least successful of any in the book, in part because it is tied to the use of 1 package (albeit a popular one with the medical community), Eudora. Perhaps the online version could be designed to explore the most popular packages depending on the reader's preference.

The exercise demonstrating how to find physicians, hospitals, and medical schools on the Web is very good. Some unique Web sites are highlighted; in some cases, the annotations about those sites could have been more substantial rather than just providing quotations from the site itself. The exercise on finding health- and medicine-related discussion lists is also excellent. One of the author's own sites, the gold standard for finding professional lists, The Directory of Scholarly and Professional E-Conferences, is highlighted. Learning where and how to search Web-based archives of discussion lists could potentially be very helpful for the obscure medical question.

There is another unique opportunity offered in the second unit. With the use of MOO (multiuser object-oriented) software, the authors provide access to an online meeting facility in one of the exercises. Diversity University (DU) is a virtual educational institution on the Web, complete with a student's union, library, medical complex, etc. After entering the DU Web site, the student can choose to log on as a guest and move to different locations, typing in queries to other students who may also be online at the same time. As Web chat software becomes more ubiquitous, exposure to how this works in a "safe," nonthreatening environment could be useful to both healthcare professionals and consumers. Among other businesses starting to explore this application, there are even some health systems exploring its use to communicate with consumers.

Unit Three moves beyond the basics covered in the first 2 units and emphasizes the importance of developing a search strategy, concentrating even more on developing evaluation skills through practice. The authors correctly advise the user, at least for some types of research, to avoid starting out with a general search engine, and to use, instead, a medical-specific metasite, especially one of those recommended by the authors in the basic and advanced resource lists. Although it is listed later in the Pulsepoints section, the National Library of Medicine's MedlinePlus site should have been included here as well.

The discussion of healthcare education providers on the Web could have been more extensive. Especially for healthcare professionals who may have a medical library in their affiliated institutions, there may be many more CME opportunities available to them through network access to various Web-based information resources (eg, MDConsult, Scientific American Medicine Online, etc.) These sites, although they require a fee, have substantial CME offerings. There are also several metasites of CME offerings not mentioned.

Especially useful are the last 2 exercises in the tutorial that encourage the reader to choose and evaluate both metasites and subject-specific sites, and to solicit instructor feedback through the online version. In the next exercise, readers are presented with 15 information-seeking scenarios, and then, using the Pulsepoints in Appendix A, they select sites that may be appropriate, noting the URLs consulted, search terms used, and results in each. Then the authors present possible strategies to use with each scenario, including detailed instructions on what to do at the site(s) chosen. They emphasize that there is no one "right answer" and that working through the scenarios and determining the strengths and shortcomings of the sites chosen will help develop the necessary Web skills in the reader's research repertoire.

The book concludes with an appendix of Pulsepoints, or a core collection of Internet health and medical information resources. Without the online version, this section would not be useful, since Web addresses change frequently. Another appendix includes a glossary of basic Internet facts and concepts. The final appendix contains 3 references for further reading; all 3 have Web addresses providing either the full text or at least more information on the resource. A fairly thorough index (for this type of book) is also included.

In conclusion, this tutorial is recommended for consumers and healthcare professionals with limited experience with the Internet. Both groups can benefit from the strategies provided, as well as the lengthy cautions about evaluating quality. However, for the clinician looking for in-depth specialized research tips in a specific field of interest, this is not the book. On the other hand, almost anyone would find something of value in this well-executed guide to finding medical information on the Web.

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Medscape General Medicine. 2001;3(1) © 2001 Medscape