JOURNAL OF WOMEN’S HEALTH & GENDER-BASED MEDICINEVolume 10, Number 1, 2001Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Tips for Successful SurfingJACQUELINE C. WOOTTON, M.Ed.

Designed to keep readers in the forefront of the ever-expanding number of electronic resources onWomen’s Health & Gender-Based Medicine issues, provide guidelines on who to evaluate the ma-terial, and supply regular updates on new on-line locations and developments on the Web. The Uni-form Resource Locators (URLS) are shown in bold type, and search terms are shown underlinedin the text.

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FROM MY RECENT INTERACTIONS at workshops and demonstrations of Internet resources around thecountry and abroad, I found that there is still a minority of healthcare professionals who are

unfamiliar with the web. Most are sophisticated surfers who have their own favorite search sites,whether search engines or directory style. A recent WebWatch discussed the New GenerationSearch Engines and explained the fundamental differences (J Women’s Health Gender-Based Med2000;1:79.).

This WebWatch provides an overview of the main principles behind accessing relevant resourcesso that individuals can create their own Bookmarks (Netscape) or Favorites (Internet Explorer) tai-lored to their specific needs. It is no longer possible to keep up with all developments on the web,with such a vast number of sites and new ones appearing daily.

IMPARTIAL INFORMATION COLLECTIONS

In the same way that librarians can neither know nor be held responsible for the contents of allthe books in their libraries, so organizations putting up clear, categorized information resources doso in a spirit of presenting information as completely and impartially as possible. Visitors to suchsites are expected to sift and assess from their own perspectives and needs.

Government and other sites

Government sites have generally adopted this philosophy. The prime example is PubMed(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/), providing searchable access to the entire Medline data-base. The Mammary Genome Program (http://mammary.nih.gov/), called the Biology of the Mam-mary Gland, is another example.

The Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Center at Columbia University College of Physicians andSurgeons (http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/rosenthal/Women.html) has adopted the philosophyof providing impartial, categorized information resources. There is an extensive, annotated listing ofsites, including online medical journals and professional associations, and a collection of comple-mentary and alternative medicine resources relevant to women’s health.

WebWatch—Women’s Health &Gender-Based Medicine

Health sciences libraries

Health sciences libraries have turned their attention to providing neutral categorized listings of in-formation on the WWW. Some noteworthy sites are:

Hardin, MD—Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women’s Healthhttp://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/obgyn.html

From the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, University of Iowa.

Global Health—Women’s Healthhttp://www.pitt.edu/HOME/GHNet/GHWomen.html

Collection of relevant sites from the University of Pittsburgh, with search capacity.

HealthWeb Women’s Healthhttp://healthweb.org/browse.cfm?subjectid5 96

A metadirectory from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Health Sciences Library.

MedWeb: Women’s Healthhttp://www.MedWeb.Emory.Edu/MedWeb/

Click on Consumer Health—Women’s Health for a categorized listing.

EVALUATED SITES

Many sites offer information resources that have been quality evaluated by one or two individu-als or even a committee. This procedure usually necessitates a compromise on completeness, as thetime necessary for the evaluation inevitably means that the collection cannot be comprehensive andcurrent. It is necessary to ask who the evaluators are and whether you trust them or share their per-spectives.

The Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Women’s Health (http://www.4woman.org/owh/index.htm) provides quality evaluated resources on women’s programs, publica-tions, and resources. OWH supports multidisciplinary research and public and healthcare profes-sional education targeted toward the special needs of women, including underserved and minoritywomen. Seventeen Centers of Excellence in Women’s Health Research can be accessed from this site.

Medline Plus (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/womenshealth.html) provides an extensivecategorized listing of research information on women’s health and many other topics. The resourceshave been selected and comprise primarily information from government and government fundedoffices.

HealthFinder (http://www.healthfinder.gov/justforyou/women/default.htm) is described as“your free guide to reliable health information” and is aimed primarily at healthcare consumers andpatients. There is a strong emphasis on wellness, nutrition, and diet.

HEALTH CONSUMER MOVEMENT

Chat groups and activist sites are often denigrated as bigoted, biased, and sensationalist. How-ever, provided they are clear about the intentions of the participants, it may be useful for patients tolisten to a number of perspectives and to gain from the experience of others who have the same orsimilar health problems. This is not so different from chatting to friends, family, and neighbors togain their advice and ideas and is an essential aspect of the health consumer movement. Breast can-cer activists, for instance, have generated many self-help sites and have been particularly successfulin self-education and lobbying. The health sciences libraries provide listings of chat groups and pro-fessional listservs.

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THE DOTCOMS

The demise of the dotcoms has been headline news during the past year, dashing the hopes ofmany who had invested in Internet shares. Startup companies anticipated that broadband connec-tions would deliver multimedia, product-driven sites targeted to particular audiences. However,broadband has been slow in catching on, and the content necessary to make it desirable has not beendeveloped.

Getting people to pay for content proved intractable. Many content sites started by charging sub-scriptions but had to abandon that model. Advertising has also been disappointing, as few visitorsbother to click on banner ads. News sources flourish on the Internet, as do intensely content-drivensites. Sites that depend on interaction and participation, such as auction sites, are popular, but gen-eral entertainment sites withered once it became clear that they are no more interactive or enter-taining than television.

The health sites have had their share of the anguish, incurring criticism about excessive commer-cialism and failure to distinguish clearly between advertising and information—most notablydrkoop.com. Some well-funded startups crashed before launch. There have been survivors and evensuccessful newcomers. Two examples are WebMD and Vicus.com.

WebMD (http://www.WebMD.com) successfully merged with Healtheon and has recently ac-quired several more companies. The site is fully searchable and covers administrative resources forthe medical profession, such as claims, laboratories, and pharmaceutical alerts, as well as providinginformation specifically directed to consumers, physicians, nurses, and educators. The physicians re-sources require a basic monthly paid subscription. WebMD has extensive resources on women’shealth.

Vicus.com (http://www.vicus.com) is a relative newcomer but has quickly made its mark as anonline resource for professionals and consumers interested in “balanced and trustworthy” informa-tion on wellness and integrative and alternative medicine. The site contains selected articles and ref-erence materials, a professional directory, and professional resources. There is no advertising of healthproducts on the site, a factor that increases credibility. Membership is encouraged, but registrationis not required.

Jacqueline C. Wootton, M.Ed. is Informatics Project Director, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Center for Com-plementary & Alternative Medicine, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Columbia University College of Physi-cians & Surgeons, in New York City.

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