Dear Fiona,

What a wonderful message! This is exactly the sort of discussion I hoped
to see when I joined this list. My name is Pat Anderson, and I am a
librarian and researcher from the USA who specializes in internet health
information issues. I actually have a book coming out next Spring on this
topic (writing heavily now through the end of the year), so am
particularly interested by what resources people are aware of and prefer
for consumer information. My co-author (Nancy Allee) and I will be doing a
website to support the book, but in the meantime I can point you all to
some earlier work of ours/mine, and I would like to comment or expand a
little on some of your suggestions below.

First, my research to date has tended to focus in three main areas.

1) Patterns and models of consumer health inquiry. Personally, I don't
feel quite as strong in this area as some of the others, but have gotten
good responses to the following site, which was intended for librarians
NOT in a health environment who find themselves called upon to assist
patrons with health questions.

<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfa/pro/articles/FAQs/>

2) Evaluation of both content and interface issues in use of search
engines for retrieval of health information, both consumer and
practitioner.

<http://www.lib.umich.edu/megasite/>

The combination of the two above resulted in a decision tree for matching
the health information need to the appropriate search engine.

<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfa/pro/articles/dtree4.pdf>

NOTE: This was a model developed a couple years ago, and with changes in
some of the search engines, I would now select different specific engines
for some of the end-points. Note also that this needs to be reworked to
use standardized flow chart graphics for the model.

3) All of the above translated into development of various training and
teaching tools which are used with both consumers and health science
students for enriching Internet skills overall. Here are a few examples of
some of the specific tools.

Practitioner Web Site Evaluation Tool / Assignment
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfa/pro/courses/procomm.html>

Patient Information Web Site Evaluation Tool / Assignment
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfa/pro/courses/PtURLs.html>

Search Strategy Development Tool / Assignment (FRIAR/SECT)
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfa/pro/courses/PtCareQs.html>

I hope you all find these useful and interesting. The training tools are
being used in a fair number of American schools, I think about 20, but
would need to count again to make sure, and the Megasite Project has been
linked to from a number of good places, including the World Health
Organization, American Medical Association, and Network of National
Libraries of Medicine (US).

A few quick comments ... Thanks for the tips on the new books! I hadn't
heard about the Kiley and Graham book yet! The second book was from some
of the OMNI folks, and they have truly done a splendid job. I often
recommend their work, and see Betsy's name in print often. As you said,
truly reputable experts in this area!

Another recent resource you may all find of interest is the following
report on quality of net information:

Proceed with Caution: A Report on the Quality of Health Information on the
Internet
<http://ehealth.chcf.org/view.cfm?section=Industry&itemID=3973>

> 4. There are *3* publications with names like 'health (information) on the
> internet'....! One I find very good is 'He@lth Information on the Internet'
> see http://www.hioti.org/ (print and e versions). Unfortunately, there's no
> longer free full-text on the internet for non-subscribers, tho you can
> access older issues and a free recent sample issue.

A few I like:
Journal of Medical Internet Research
<http://www.jmir.org/>

Health Care on the Internet, Haworth Press
<http://www.haworthpressinc.com/store/product.asp?sku=J138>
 (Really helpful articles focused on sources for hot topics of consumer
  interest)

Medicine on the Net, www.corhealth.com

> 5. Searching: I start with OMNI http://omni.ac.uk (UK) but there are also
> other nationally funded gateways to quality-checked resources (with local
> and usually international coverage) eg
> Health on the Net               http://www.hon.ch (Switzerland) (also has
> Code for web sites)
> Healthfinder            http://healthfinder (USA)
> HealthInsite            http://www.healthinsite.gov.au (Australia)
> Canadian Health Network http://www.canadian-health-network.ca/ (Canada)

Nice selection, and some very good reputable sites. For HON, I find it
very different to search the HON site, and the HON service, MedHunt.

<http://www.hon.ch/MedHunt/>

I mentally divide consumer health sites into those which provide
information and those which point to information. Above when you mentioned
healthfinder, the URL is incomplete, so here it is:

healthfinder:
<http://www.healthfinder.gov/>

  Provides an amazing array of information, some links.

My other favorite consumer health site is MedlinePlus, also from the US
government, which reverses the above, providing mostly highly selective
and reviewed links, and some information (dictionaries, encyclopedias,
anatomy tools, drug information tools, etc.).

MedlinePlus
<http://www.medlineplus.gov/>

For a teaching resource or browsing for practitioners (but usually not
terribly specific information), I also use HealthWeb, which is similar to
OMNI in many ways.

<http://healthweb.org/>

I very much look forward to other resources all you may recommend!

Regards,

Pat Anderson
Megasite Project
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