 |
 |
Hi lisfriends, an article I found in JAMA. Journal of the American Medical Asocciation. ======================================================================== >From : JAMA, JUNE 4, 1997 -========================================================================= Books, Journals, New Media Internet Mosby's Medical Sudan: A Guide to Exploring the Internet and Discovering the Top Health Care Resources, edited by Scott Gibbs, Micaela Sullivan-Fowler, and Nigel W. Rowe, 320 pp, with illus, and one 3.5-in disk with Mosby's Medical Surfari book-marks, paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-8151-4817-8, St Louis, Mo, Mosby, 1996. The Internet is rapidly growing as a source of health-related information for patients, physicians, and other health care professionals. As persons interested in health care promotion and education realize the power of the computer and put its strengths to use, the Internet will become an important (and inexpen-sive) library of information. As recently noted by my colleague Dr Richard Friedman, there are a number of problems with using the World Wide Web as a source of medical education or information.1 Although Mosby's Medi-cal Surfari, a guide to exploring the Internet and discovering health care re-sources, cannot overcome the challenge of creating innovative, up4o-date, mul-timedia-based medical information, it does provide the user with a guide to how to best use the Internet for cur-rently available health care resources. I found Medical Surfari to be an excel-lent resource for both the novice and more seasoned Internet user. For the beginner, Medical Surfari re-views computer equipment options, ba-sic use of e-mail and the World Wide Web, online service options, and Inter-net software. For persons with Internet experience, Medical Surfari provides details about search strategies and news-groups. Anyone who wishes to use the Inter-net for a wide variety of health care information will appreciate the compre-hensive list of resources available in chapter 9. The software search program provided with the text is easy to use and organizes all the health care Web sites for easy access within your Web browser environment. The authors and multiple physician consultants have reviewed the Web sites and provide the reader with informa-tion about content, graphics, online re-sponse rate, and resource type (profes-sional, educational, patient-oriented). Short summaries give the useR guidance about the general content of the web site. However, it is not possible in the space provided to comprehensively review content. Content reliability should be a concern of any Internet user and is amajorpointofcriticismforwide-spread use of the Internet as a health care resource. In addition, the authors of Medical Surfari cannot be account-able for Web page maintenance as Web sites move, become outdated, or go off-line. Medical Surfari is well written, filled with pearls on Internet exploration, and the only available Internet guide to health care resources. With 500000-plus Web sites, the information that Medical Surfari provides is quite valuable to the frequent user of the Internet or some-one who is just starting. However, this edition will become quickly outdated. I hope that Mosby will provide us with frequent (hopefully yearly) updates of the resources and software, in addition to updating the text as needed. Alan J. Bridges, MD University of Wisconsin.