BMJ No 7098 Volume 314
Information in practice Saturday 28 June 1997
Netlines
Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
 | Medicine is seldom out of the news, and it can
be a struggle to keep up with what journalists are saying (and hence
what patients are hearing). One way is to use the excellent news
resources available on line. Reuters Health News is available on
http://www.reutershealth.com/news, while
CNN has a health section on
http://cnn.com/HEALTH/. | |
| Most of the British quality dailies now have at least a limited presence on the internet - try visiting them on http://www.telegraph.co.uk, http://www.guardian.co.uk, http://www.the-times.co.uk, and http://www.independent.co.uk. |
European Vascular Surgery Society
| The European Vascular Surgery Society now has a web site accessible on http://www.esvs.org. The site houses information on all aspects of the society's activities (including details of membership and travel grants) and links to other sites with information on vascular surgery, including the online version of the European Journal of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery. |
Mental health law on line
| The web site of the Institute for Mental Health
Law (http://www.imhl.com) is worth a look
for psychiatrists, lawyers, and anyone else who has to deal with legal
aspects of mental health. There is a history of legislation about
mental health and reports on court cases and inquiries about mental
health, together with links to other material on mental health law.
| |
| Also worth a visit is the HyperGuide to the Mental Health Act 1983 (http://www.hyperguide.co.uk/mha/), which provides an excellent illustration of hypertext in action. |
Bristol Biomedical Image Archive
| The Bristol Biomedical Image Archive (http://www.ets.bris.ac.uk/brisbio.htm) is a collection of about 20,000 images that you can use to teach medical, veterinary, and dental science. Although use of the images is free, you will have to register before you can download them. |
Guide to Clinical Preventive Services
| The full text of the Guide to Clinical Preventive Services, produced by the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), can be found on http://cait.cpmc.columbia.edu/texts/gcps/. The guide provides an online source of evidence based information on the effectiveness of clinical preventive services such as screening, immunisation, and health education. |
Whole Brain Atlas
| For the definitive online voyage through the human brain, visit the Whole Brain Atlas on http://www.med.harvard.edu:80/AANLIB/home.html. You can view hundreds of images (moving and still) of normal and abnormal brain structures, although you will need a JAVA-compliant browser for the best effects. |
Project Gutenberg
| Project Gutenberg (http://www.promo.net/pg/index.html) is an ambitious project to make all the major written works that are out of copyright freely available on line in electronic format ("etext"). Several sites around the world house the project's etext archive (http://www.promo.net/pg/lists/list.html), which presently contains over 900 texts ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Zen and the Art of Internet with all of Shakespeare and a large slice of English literature in between. Sadly, I could find few medical texts in the archive. Volunteers who would like to help get Hippocrates, Galen, Harvey, etc, on line should visit http://www.promo.net/pg/volunteer.html. |
But for an email...
| If you forget appointments, anniversaries, birthdays, etc, try using Tickler Mail (http://www.joes.com/tickler.html). You can set up it up so that you will receive an email at any date in the future, reminding you of whatever you need to remember. |
A walk on the weird side
| If you are looking for the weirder side of life on line, try the novel Nearly Roadkill by Caitlin Sullivan and Kate Bornstein - there is transsexuality, online sex, and "Big Brother" paranoia all mixed in with a dollop of cyberculture. You can sample it on http://www.nearlyroadkill.com/. If you prefer cyber-cocoa to cyber-speed, try Stephanie Fletcher's E-mail: a Love Story instead (only available in deadtree format), but you still might blush at the online sex scenes. |
Compiled by Mark Pallen
email
m.pallen@qmw.ac.uk
web page
http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~rhbm001/mpallen.html
If you are not yet on line you can find help in getting connected in the ABC of Medical Computing (eds: Nicholas Lee and Andrew Millman, BMJ Publishing), which has Mark Pallen's Guide to the Internet as a supplement.
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