Fyi,
>From Dr Dave Sturgill and the NISMEDINFO List
Thanks Dave,
Bob Pyke Jr.,RN,CPNP
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New Articles in the Literature:


1.  "How the Internet is changing medicine"

http://www.usatoday.com/life/health/online/lhonl000.htm
"How the Internet is changing medicine" - article series from USA Today


2. The Effect Of The Information Revolution On American Medical Schools

American medical schools have a history of responding to changes in
society. They will need to continue to evolve because the Information
Revolution's easy access to inexpensive, highly specialized information
alters the contract between society and the physician and between the
individual patient and the physician.
MedGenMed, July 26, 1999
http://www.medscape.com/5839.rhtml
(Medscape requires a free registration)



3.  Evaluation of Cancer Information on the Internet
J. Sybil Biermann, Gregory J. Golladay, Mary Lou V. H. Greenfield, and
Laurence H. Baker
CANCER Volume 86 Number 3 (August 1, 1999) p.381

http://canceronline.wiley.com/curriss.html  (Online access for paid
CANCER
subscribers only)

Abstract:
In a review of medical information regarding a single cancer topic, the
authors found abundant nonpeer-reviewed material and a 6% rate of
factual
inaccuracies. Therefore the authors recommend that physicians maintain
an
open mind regarding searches done by patients and questions raised by
those
searches, and suggest that physicians take an active role in identifying
or
creating patient information Web sites and in educating the lay public
regarding variations in the quality of information and the contribution
of
the peer review process.

As reported in the NY Times:

Online Medical Information Does Poorly on Accuracy Exam

        The growing field of on-line medical information was recently
given an exam,
        and the results were not good. According to a study published
this week in
        the journal Cancer, more than a third of the medical sites
scrutinized had
not
        been subjected to peer review. And at least 6 percent of them
contained wrong
        information.

        Dr. J. Sybil Biermann, an orthopedic oncologist, and three
colleagues at the
        University of Michigan conducted the study. They reviewed nearly
400 Web
        pages retrieved by four search engines after they searched
variations of
the words
        "Ewing sarcoma," a form of bone cancer that occurs in children
and
teen-agers.

        A few sites, for example, overstated or understated the survival
rate
among those
        with the disease, which experts estimate to be 70 percent to 75
percent. The
        researchers found that the site of Encyclopaedia Britannica said
the
mortality rate
        was 95 percent. Such information could lead a parent away from
worthwhile
        therapy, Dr. Biermann wrote. "The devastating effect these
postings would
have
        on vulnerable patients is incalculable," she added.



4.  Labeling and filtering of medical information on the Internet.
Methods Inf Med 1999 Jun;38(2):80-8
(Full text not available online)

Eysenbach G, Diepgen TL

Dept. of Clinical Social Medicine, University of Heidelberg, Germany.

[Medline record in process]

Internet information undergoes no quality controls and virtually anybody

can publish anything. Because of this, it is difficult for searchers to
take information retrieved from the Internet at face value. A related
problem is the uncontrolled promotion of medical products on the
Internet.
A further problem of today's Internet is that authors use no uniform
keywords and other descriptive labels, which deteriorates the quality of

search results. A solution for all these problems could be widespread
use
of descriptive and evaluative metainformation associated with medical
Internet information. Our concept is based on a recently established
infrastructure for assigning metadata to Internet information, the
so-called PICS Standard (Platform for Internet Content Selection). We
prototyped a PICS-based rating vocabulary for medical information
(med-PICS), containing descriptive and evaluative categories, to be used
by
the webauthor and third-party label services (such as medical
associations), respectively. We propose an international effort to
assign
metadata to medical Internet information.





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