A DOSE OF MEDICINE

There is a vast array of medical and health information available to trial lawyers on the Internet. But the search can sometimes be difficult, confusing or even overwhelming due to the sheer volume of information. And it can be tough sometimes to tell the difference between the good and the bad medical information.

There are several good and reliable places to start your research into medical issues. The site sponsored by the National Institute of Health (www.nih.gov) has health information organized by categories -body location and system; conditions and diseases; and health and wellness. It also has links to clinical trials, clinical practice guidelines, MEDLINEplus, (www.medlineplus.com), the health database maintained by NIH's National Library of Medicine, and PubMed, (www.nlm.nih.gov), the most comprehensive database of article titles and abstracts.

PubMed includes over 14 million citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950's. PubMed includes links to many sites providing full text articles. Earlier this summer, the U.S. National Library of Medicine announced a major effort to digitize the complete backfiles of a number of important and historically significant medical journals, including the Annals of Surgery, Biochemical Journal, Journal of Physiology and Medical History. A few key medical journals make the contents of their publications available for free on the Internet with their own search capabilities. For example, it is frequently useful to stop at the site of JAMA & Archives (http://pubs.ama-assn.org), or at the New England Journal of Medicine site (http://content.nejm.org) and the American Family Physician site (www.aafp.org).

Here are a few more good sites with broad-based medical resources: Martindale's Virtual Medical Center site (www.martindalecenter.com/Medical.html), is a little awkward to use because of its format, but with a couple of clicks can link you to most of the journals, databases and clinical guidelines within a given field of medicine. The MedWeb site (www.medweb.emory.edu) is a catalog of biomedical and health related web sites maintained by the staff of the Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University. The Virtual Naval Hospital site (www.vnh.org) can also be a useful free site.

There are a couple of sites that require a subscription that you may wish to try out: MedicalMatrix (www.medmatrix.org) claims to have links to over 6000 medical web sites and over 1.5 million documents, all pre-selected by a team of physicians and medical librarians. Medscape (www.medscape.com) offers access to online medical journals, medical specialty sites, but also coverage of recent medical conferences. Its target audience is clinicians and other healthcare professionals. It is sponsored by WebMD. Skolar MD (www.skolar.com) is geared toward clinicians and claims to have a powerful search engine for textbooks, drug information, evidence-based medicine and guidelines, full-text journal articles and more. It is sponsored by Wolters Kluwer Health, a medical information company.

When investigating a claim for injury relating to a drug or a medical devices, there are several good resources available on the Internet. The MedlinePlus and HardinMD (www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/pharm.html) web sites both have extensive information about drugs. Also check out the Clinical Pharmacology site (www.cponline.gsm.com), the United States Pharmacopeia site (www.usp.org), that develops drug standards, and of course, the Food and Drug Administration's site (www.fda.gov)., which includes FDA Federal Register Notices, and Drug & Device Approvals. For information about medical devices, go to the Medical Device Register site (www.mdrweb.com).

Sometimes you just want to better understand the anatomy involved in your client's injury or carry a picture with you to the treating doctor's deposition. For anatomy, check out the Inner Learning Online site (www.innerbody.com) ; Wright State University School of Medicine's site (www.anatomy.wright.edu) or the Digital Anatomist site (http://sig.biostr.washington.edu/projects), which is sponsored by the University of Washington. For pictures, check out the HardinMD site (www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md), which is sponsored by the University of Iowa. Of course, you can gain access to a large-but proprietary-- library of medical illustrations and animations by going to the ADAM site (www.adamcorp.com).

You may be interested in the "top ten" list developed by the Medical Library Association. MLA finds the following web sites most useful:

• www.cancer.gov - sponsored by the National Cancer Institute of the U.S. National Institute of Health
• www.cdc.org - sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• http://familydoctor.org - sponsored by the American Academy of Family Physicians
• www.healthfinder.gov - sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
• http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu - information on HIC/AIDS treatment, prevention and policy from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine
• www.kidshealth.org - sponsored by the Nemours Foundation
• www.mayoclinic.com - sponsored by the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education & Research
• http://medem.com - sponsored by Medem, a physician practice-patient communications network founded by seven leading medical societies
• http://medlineplus.gov - sponsored by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health
• www.noah-health.org - sponsored by New York Online Access to Health

MLA evaluates web sites based on credibility, sponsorship/ authorship, content, audience, currency, disclosure, purpose, links, design, interactivity and disclaimers.

Just remember that not all web sites are created equal. For example, you would treat differently information found on a federal government site and information found on an individual's site. As MedlinePlus puts it, "There is a big difference between a site that says, "I developed this site after my heart attach" and one that says, "This page on heart attack was developed by health professionals at the American Heart Association". In evaluating medical web sites, consider "Ten Things to Know about Evaluating Medical Resources on the Web", published by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine".