GREAT SITES ON THE INTERNET FOR USE BY PATIENTS AND DOCTORS

The Internet has become a critical medium for clinicians, public health practitioners, and laypeople seeking health information. Data about diseases and outbreaks are disseminated not only through online announcements by government agencies but also through informal channels, ranging from press reports to blogs to chat rooms to analyses of Web searches (see Digital Resources for Disease Detection). Collectively, these sources provide a view of global health that is fundamentally different from that yielded by the disease reporting of the traditional public health infrastructure.

Broader Web-based networks are also proving useful for surveillance. Social-networking sites for clinicians, patients, and the general public hold potential for harnessing the collective wisdom of the masses for disease detection. Given the continued deployment of personally controlled electronic health records, we expect that patients' contributions to disease surveillance will increase. Eventually, mobile-phone technology, enabled by global positioning systems and coupled with short-message-service messaging (texting) and "microblogging" (with Twitter), might also come into play. For instance, an organization called Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases, and Disasters (InSTEDD) has developed open-source technology to permit seamless cross-border communication between mobile devices for early warning and response in resource-constrained settings.

Digital Resources for Disease Detection.
Sample Web-based data sources for flu and other infectious diseases worldwide.
ProMED-mail, www.promedmail.org
Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN),www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/media/nr-rp/2004/2004_gphin-rmispbk-eng.php
HealthMap, www.healthmap.org
MediSys, http://medusa.jrc.it
EpiSPIDER, www.epispider.org
BioCaster, http://biocaster.nii.ac.jp
Wildlife Disease Information Node, http://wildlifedisease.nbii.gov
H5N1 Google Earth mashup, www.nature.com/avianflu/google-earth
Avian Influenza Daily Digest and blog, www.aidailydigest.blogspot.com
Google Flu Trends, www.google.org/flutrends
Google Insights for Search, www.google.com/insights/search
DiSTRIBuTE, www.syndromic.org/projects/DiSTRIBuTE.htm
GeoSentinel, www.istm.org/geosentinel/main.html
Emerging Infections Network, http://ein.idsociety.org
Argus, http://biodefense.georgetown.edu
Sample health-related social-networking sites
Physicians, www.sermo.com
Patients, www.patientslikeme.com
Everyone, www.healthysocial.org

Please remember, as with all our articles we provide information, not medical advice.
For any treatment of your own medical condition you must visit your local doctor, with or without our article[s]. These articles are not to be taken as individual medical advice.

Deepen your understanding of "medical malpractice"... www.MedMalBook.com

For more health info and links visit the author's web site www.hookman.com