Confused? Review the Glossary.

General Health

HealthGate
HealthGate Data Corp. of Malden, Mass., offers medical search and database services, including Medline, AIDSLine and CancerLit searches, for hospitals and organizations.

InteliHealth
InteliHealth, a joint venture of Aetna U.S. Healthcare Inc. and Johns Hopkins University Hospital and Health System, is frequently recommended because of big names behind it. It also has content supplied by such trusted names as the National Institutes of Health and the National Health Council. The site's main focus is advice, ranging from what causes panic attacks to how to cure hiccups. Another particularly useful feature is a drug index that describes the uses and side effects of both generic and brand name medications.

Mayo Clinic
A team of doctors and researchers from the respected clinic directs this site, which contains sections - called "centers" - that focus on different topics, such as Alzheimer's disease and heart issues. Each of the centers is then broken into smaller sections, such as quizzes to test your knowledge, a library of references and links to other sites. One of the best features is the Ask Mayo section, which allows a patient to e-mail a question directly to a team of Mayo clinic physicians. Answers are posted to the Web site, and an archive of previously asked questions can be searched according to topic.

Medline
Accessible through this site is a huge database of abstracts from the National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine. The abstracts cover more than nine million articles from more than 3800 biomedical journals. The site isn't particularly fancy-it's basically just a barebones search engine-but this is some of the most useful medical information on the Web. The Medline database covers the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health-care system, and preclinical studies. Unfortunately, receiving the full articles is a complicated process that involves setting up a relationship with a local medical library.

The New England Journal of Medicine
The online version of this prestigious medical journal allows visitors to search for scientific studies the journal has published. The full text of the publication is available online only to subscribers or to nonsubscribers by mail or fax for $10 per article, but anyone can check out the abstracts, back to 1990.

Wellness Web
Bart Moran, Villanova, Pa., started this site more than five years ago after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Mr. Moran went to several doctors to find out about different treatment, but didn't feel he was getting the whole truth about alternative-medicine procedures. He spent half a year researching the topic, and then posted what he learned on the Web to share with others. In time, the site grew to include lots of other medical information; now it has big sections on both alternative and conventional medicine. The alternative-medicine section, for example, offers news about herbs and supplements, nutritional medicine, and questionable practices.

Health A to Z
This site act as a search engine for medical sites. It has cataloged thousands of Web sites that focus on medical issues. The site also runs a group of electronic bulletin boards on topics from infertility to kidney cancer, where people can post notes and have them answered by other visitors, usually non-medical authors, to the site.

Health on the Net
The Health on the Net Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in Geneva that monitors medical Web sites to make sure they are dispensing credible, accurate information. The group was founded in 1995 after a conference of international medical experts decided there was a need for oversight on the Internet. Health on the Net has issued its seal of approval to over 1300 Web sites that promise to follow its guidelines. At the site, you can read about the group's code of conduct and search its database of sites that meet the foundation's standards. A seal from the group is a good sign that a Web site is playing by the rules.

Sapient Health Network
Sapient is a health information service for people with chronic illnesses. On the opening screen, it lists a series of illnesses such as diabetes, asthma, and heart disease; click on one and it takes you into the area developed for that particular topic. Available services include chat rooms and bulletin boards where you can interact with other patients with similar conditions. Users have to sign up and provide some personal information, but membership is free.

urologychannel
This website serves physicians and patients by providing a variety of resources and responding to inquiries about urological problems and services. More than 3500 urologists are available online within the site's database. The channel's interactive sections and utility features include Health Profilers, which enable users to profile their PSA, prostate cancer risk, and more. The site offers online forums where consumers can post questions for physicians.

Vasectomy.com
The leading site about vasectomy & reversals, alternatives, no-scalpel vasectomy, risks and more ... from experienced doctors to informed consumers.

 

Cancer

American Association for Cancer Research
This scientific society, which has more than 13,000 laboratory and clinical cancer researchers as members, was founded in 1907 to disseminate knowledge about cancer. Some areas of the site are for members only, but nonmembers can use the site to search the abstracts of the society's four scientific journals. Search for the words "prostate cancer," and the site returns dozens of abstracts.

Association of Community Cancer Centers
The association is a national interdisciplinary group that attempts to improve the care of cancer patients. Some of the tips the site offers seem rudimentary and aren't likely to be of much benefit to someone who has already been diagnosed with cancer. The site does have a useful database about cancer centers in all 50 states. It doesn't rate the centers, but does give basic quantitative information-such as the number of beds, affiliations and certifications, and number of medical oncologists on staff-to help patients compare the centers.

CancerGuide
This site is created by a cancer patient and is designed to help other cancer patients find the answers to their questions-and to figure out what questions they should be asking. The site does a good job of walking a patient through the difficult choices he or she will face, with sections on everything from the basic information about cancer to issues that should be considered before undergoing experimental treatment. Also offered: stories from other cancer patients about how they have coped.

CancerNet
CancerNet has separate sections for patients, health professionals and basic researchers. Here you can get access to data from PDQ, the National Cancer Institute's computer system that tracks cancer and its treatments. This is some of the most up-to-date cancer information on the Net. To make sure it is current, the data are reviewed and updated each month by cancer experts. In the section for patients, you can find screening, prevention, and treatment data on dozens of types of cancer, all written in easy-to-understand language. You can find a typical treatment plan for prostate cancer in each of the four stages of advancement.

oncologychannel
This website serves physicians and patients by providing a variety of resources about cancer diagnosis and treatment. Board-certified physicians develop and monitor the content on oncologychannel to ensure accurate, trustworthy information. The site also offers online forums where consumers can post questions for physicians.

 

Drug Information

RxList
This online drug index allows visitors to look up a drug by either generic or brand name, find out about possible side effects, read about clinical studies and find out about any warnings. This site is smart enough to have "fuzzy search" capability-if you misspell the name of a drug you are seeking, it will bring up other possible matches.