Medical Advisory Board

Fun & Games
"Site Of The Day" Sites
Government Sites
Healthcare News & Portals
Medical Journals
Pharmaceuticals
Reference Sites & Search Engines

Please note: Some sites may require registration to access all features.

Fun & Games

Dilbert.com
Official home of the famous cartoon.

How Stuff Works
Besides the usual mechanical and technical categories, you can also find out how pragmatic, day-to-day stuff works. Examples: how bread works, how holidays work.

Online Games
Don't want to download games on your work computer? The games at this site are played online without downloading.

Profession Jokes
Profession-based humor, including jokes about/for doctors, dentists, nurses, biologists, pharmacists, psychologists, and psychiatrists.

Send A DNA-O-Gram
For the friend or colleague who's seen everything: Type in a message here and it will automatically be encoded as DNA. You'll be given the option to mail the encoded message to someone (the message will be accompanied by instructions on how to decode it).

Skeptic's Dictionary: A Guide For The New Millennium
More than 338 skeptical definitions, arguments, and essays on pseudoscientific ideas and practices, the occult, the paranormal, and the supernatural, with references to the best skeptical literature. You've gotta like a site with a FAQ whose first question is "Who made you God?"

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"Site Of The Day" Sites

Cool Site Of The Day

The Cool Tricks And Trinkets Newsletter
Weekly roundup of new, cool, fun, and unusual websites.

NewScientist.com

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Government Sites

CDC Wonder
An easy-to-use system that provides a single point of access to a wide variety of Centers for Disease Control reports, guidelines, and public health data statistics.

Centers For Disease Control
Official site offers in-depth resources, including CDC news, A-Z listings on disease topics, downloadable catalogs, brochures, software, information about the agency or about funding, access to CDC data and statistics, and the Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal.

FDA Drug Approvals List
Updated weekly, includes links to archived lists.

FDA Information For Health Professionals
Robust site serves as a portal to FDA information and services for health professionals, and replaces the old Office of Health Affairs site. Includes links to FDA information on clinical trials, drug information, international health, FDA publications, and alternative medicine. One handy feature is a link to a page of hotlinks to FDA centers and offices that can answer specific questions about drugs, biologics, medical devices, orphan products, where to report adverse reactions, how to submit electronic records, and other topics of special interest to health professionals.

FDA Warning Letters
Database of FDA warning letters, searchable by date, subject, company, and issuing office.

MedWatch
Site of the FDA Medical Product Reporting Program, whose purpose is to educate all health professionals about the critical importance of being aware of, monitoring for, and reporting adverse events and problems to FDA and/or the manufacturer. Also serves as a channel through which new safety information is communicated quickly to the medical community.

National Cancer Institute
Extremely well-designed and well-organized site provides recent, accurate cancer information from the National Cancer Institute. Features for physicians include links to PDQ (Physician Data Query), an NCI database that contains the latest information about cancer treatment, screening, prevention, genetics, and supportive care, plus clinical trials.

National Institutes of Health
This is a big site that’s difficult to navigate, but once you figure your way around you’ll find a wealth of information on NIH institutes, policies, programs, and scientific resources.

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Healthcare News & Portals

BioMedNet News
Content-rich site includes daily, brief updates on numerous articles of interest in the latest journals, with links to the corresponding abstracts and articles; a weekly in-depth report on an event of current importance in the world of biomedicine; the HMS Beagle, BioMedNet's award-winning online magazine, updated biweekly; reports and summaries of major conferences; and a section of commentary articles that’s updated weekly.

Discovery Health
Part of the Discovery Channel site. Includes free newsletters, news, live chats, personalized information, “Ask the Doc,” and fitness, weight, and nutrition information.

EurekAlert!
Site sponsored by American Association for the Advancement of Science posts material from scientific journals, research institutions, government agencies, companies, and nonprofit organizations. New information is added daily. Other resources include lists of experts, contacts to scientific organizations, and links to the home pages of EurekAlert! contributors.

Hardin Library for the Health Sciences
Listing and links to other listings and links, all organized by specialty/topic, created by a medical librarian at the University of Iowa's Hardin Library for the Health Sciences. See the “what’s new” page, which links to several sites that publish daily medical news updates. Also features an excellent list and links to medical and health science libraries on the Internet.

Health on the Net Foundation
A respected not-for-profit portal to medical information on the Internet, operated by a Swiss foundation. Offers medical search tools, MedHunt© and HONselect©. The HON Code of Conduct (HONcode©) certifies other sites as providers of authoritative, trustworthy, web-based medical information.

Aetna^SM Intelihealth
Robust health information site offers news and information organized by conditions and health areas. Includes personalized tracking tools for diseases such as asthma and diabetes, surveys, forums, discussion boards, drug search, interactive health and nutrition tools such as pollen maps, pregnancy due date calculator, calorie and fat calculations, health quizzes, and surveys.

MDExpress
Links-rich portal page edited by two MDs. Links are arranged by specialty and also include links to medical search engines, tutorials, health research organizations, medical credentialing organizations, continuing education sources, medical news, and more general informational and shopping links.

Med Help International
An award-winning site providing patients with medical information from leading physicians; covers all health conditions; links to many different sites of interest.

Pharmaceutical News and Information
Wealth of links to databases, pharmaceutical company intelligence, and news headlines that are chosen by staff editors and updated daily.

WebMD Health
Probably the deepest health-related content for consumers.

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Medical Journals

British Medical Journal
This free site contains the full text of all articles published in the weekly British Medical Journal from January 1994, as well as material that is unique to the website, including results of online debates, forums, questionnaires, and classifieds.

The Journal of the American Medical Association
Publications accessible through this site and the AMA site (http://www.ama-assn.org) include contents of issues of the JAMA and the Archives journals, the JAMA Information Centers, Medical Student JAMA, Science News Update, and American Medical News, from January 1998 to the present. Only current articles are free; the rest require an AMA membership, a subscription, or can be downloaded for a per-article fee.

The Lancet
Here you can order a subscription to the print journal The Lancet, which also includes full access to the website. It’s unclear what parts of the online version are for subscribers only, other than the discussion forums. Site does feature an electronic research archive (ERA) containing electronic preprints of papers under review with The Lancet, and an archive of research material—pre- and post-peer review—in international health.

New England Journal of Medicine
Subscribers have access to full-text articles, plus several additional features. Nonsubscribers can access selections from the Journal, including abstracts of all scientific articles. The current issue becomes available on the web at 5 p.m. each Wednesday.

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Pharmaceuticals

Pharma-Lexicon
International site whose aim is to list in its database all acronyms and abbreviations that are pharmaceutical-related. Also includes information on, lists of, and links to clinical trials, generic names, drug companies, hospitals, wholesalers, faculties, associations, directories, medical search engines, science news, pharmaceutical journals, and health ministries around the world.

Marketed or Late-Stage Pharmaceutical Products
Lists selected products from the pipelines of 16 of the largest pharmaceutical companies ranked by percentage share of U.S. sales. The lists include selected approved products with annual worldwide sales greater than $300 million, as well as some newly launched products that are projected to eventually reach sales of that magnitude, plus selected compounds with significant sales potential that are in Phase III development. The charts originally accompanied a story published in the April 19, 1999, issue of BioCentury, The Bernstein Report On BioBusiness.

Pharmaceutical Online
Site for pharmaceutical manufacturing professionals includes industry news, online catalogs, and directory of manufacturers.

PharmWeb
Resource-rich site about pharmaceuticals and the pharmaceutical industry, including a world drug alert, links to government and regulatory organizations, information on pharmacy schools, and a directory that links to dozens of pharmaceutical-related resources on the Internet.

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Reference Sites & Search Engines

MDConsult
Created through a joint venture of medical publishers including Mosby, Harcourt, W.B. Saunders, Churchill Livingstone, and Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, site includes a searchable database of 48 medical journals and clinics, more than 38 reference books, over 5,000 clinical practice guidelines, nearly 3,500 customizable patient education handouts, and drug information for more than 30,000 medications. Requires subscription fee; 10-day free trial access is available.

Med411.com
From one page you can search a surprising number of government and university databases and journals.

MEDLINEplus®
Searchable access to MEDLINEplus®, healthcare information from the world’s largest medical library, the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. MEDLINEplus® is for both health professionals and consumers, and provides access to extensive information about specific diseases and conditions. The site also links to consumer health information from the National Institutes of Health, dictionaries, lists of hospitals and physicians, health information in Spanish and other languages, and clinical trials.

Elsevier
Search almost 50 journals in all medical specialties. Search all journals or choose just one to search. You can get search results and abstracts for free, but access to full article text requires a subscription.

Physicians Desk Reference (PDR.net)
A medical and healthcare website created by the publisher of the print PDR (Physicians' Desk Reference), as well as a number of other healthcare magazines and directories. Site is customized for specific audiences: consumers, physicians, physician assistants, nurses, and pharmacists. In addition to the PDR Online and PDR Multi-Drug Interactions, you can access the publishers’ other magazines and directories, as well as other resources, including Contemporary OB/GYN®, Contemporary Pediatrics®, Contemporary Urology®, IM - Internal Medicine®, Medical Economics®, Patient Care®, MEDLINE®, a medical dictionary, medical news, medical specialty newsletters, information on clinical trials, patient education information, Directory of Hospital Personnel™, and HMO/PPO Directory®.

PubMed
PubMed is the National Library of Medicine's search service that provides access to over 11 million citations in MEDLINE®, PreMEDLINE®, and other related databases, with links to participating online journals.

RxList
Site offers keyword search by actions, interactions, brands, or imprint codes; lists of top-200 prescribed medications for the past several years, a medical dictionary, free newsletters, an online discussion board, links, an online pharmacy, and an RX comic strip.

Merriam Webster’s Medical Dictionary Online

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