What websites are popular with doctors and other medical professionals?

August 14, 2007 4:43 PM

What websites are popular with doctors and other medical professionals?
posted by bingo to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Depends on who you are and what you do, but for general interest sites: I use PubMed constantly, I occasionally look at Sermo if I have time to waste (you have to be a physician to join), and blog-wise, I read Kevin, MD. I also use Medscape from time-to-time.
posted by scblackman at 4:46 PM on August 14, 2007

Depends on the purpose. UpToDate wins for reference for most residents and med students.
posted by gramcracker at 5:04 PM on August 14, 2007

For the most visited website, I second UpToDate for clinical stuff, and PubMed. Access Medicine and MD Consult are also huge as online textbooks. Along the lines of PubMed, NIH also has a other databases for info like viral genomes and human proteins, or following a different angle, there's PsychINFO for mental health. A lot of doctors w/ palm pilots and treos would visit Epocrates and other PDA software packages.

One portion might read from the websites of common journals NEJM, JAMA, BMJ, Annals, or Lancet. Or more popular news on NYTimes Health section, or from a portal like Medscape.

A "thinking out of the box" answer is that a lot of doctors have their homepage set on their employer (either a university or an HMO) so those are "popular" webpages too.

And then there are the blogs. Here are rankings of medical blogs using automated algorithms under two systems: 1) edrugsearch and 2) Medgadget. I would imagine the readership of medical blogs pales compares to the search engine or reference websites though.

So I've covered popular websites for aimed at different purposes. In terms of what's most popular, it would depend on the sub-group. A 1st year student would probably spend his or her day on the computer most often on (1) textbook references such as AccessMedicine or even Wikipedia (2) reading health news and (3) reading med blogs. A practicing clinician might focus on (1) Employer website (2) occupational references like a drug database and PDA software followed by (3) UpToDate. A research doctor might spend the most time on (1) Pubmed followed by (2) Journal websites.
posted by alex3005 at 5:55 PM on August 14, 2007

There are a lot of reference sites and valuable niche sites for medical professionals. For somewhat commercial work related websites that are widely viewed by physicians and surgeons, the following have to be on the list. Each subspeciality has its own sources, but these are some of the biggest sources for everyone.

New England Journal of Medicine
Journal of American Medicine Association
The Lancet
Biomed Central
posted by McGuillicuddy at 6:03 PM on August 14, 2007

Allnurses.com
posted by 517 at 7:48 PM on August 14, 2007

Don't forget OMIM.
posted by ikkyu2 at 4:35 AM on August 15, 2007

Here are mine:
College of American Pathologists
Pathology Outlines
I also used to frequent Student Doctor Forums when I was a med student/resident.
posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 9:14 AM on August 15, 2007

I am not a medical professional but I do a lot of research in various clinical fields. scblackmans's right: sites you consult most frequently really depend on your specialty interest, but there are also some helpful general sites. In case you'll find it useful, I'll give you my list. Apologies for any dupes from above:

Diseases Database. This is by far the most useful, because it hits PubMed, OMIM, NIH Clinical Trials, Merck Manual, and the National Guideline Clearinghouse, which is a collection of worldwide government/industry treatment standards. I suggest always using MeSH (National Library of Medicine) terms for searches if you have the option.
Medscape
Family Practice Notebook. Favorite site for diagnostic standards.
eMedicine. Favorite site for basic overviews of various disorders.
NORD's Rare Diseases database. Very useful for information on uncommon/difficult-to-research disorders.
American Academy of Family Physicians. Their search function finds content from all their affiliate sites as well. I only use content direct from AFP, which is aimed less at consumers than at medical professionals.
Blackwell-Synergy. Paid site, but has some free content.
Ovid. Paid site, but also includes free trials of very, very good databases.
posted by melissa may at 9:21 AM on August 15, 2007