Medical Research

Sites of interest to professionals and practicioners in health, medical science, and related fields.

Sub-headings:

Medical Libraries

Resources in this category:

Altweb: Alternatives to Animal Testing
http://altweb.jhsph.edu/

"Altweb is intended to foster the development of scientifically acceptable in vitro and other alternatives to animal testing. Alternatives are defined as methods which reduce animal use, replace whole animal tests, or refine existing tests by minimizing animal distress." The site offers news, articles, lists of periodicals, information about alternative procedures, and U.S. and international regulations about animal care.

Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information
http://cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/cisti_e.html

"CISTI is one of the world's major sources for information in all areas of science, technology, engineering and medicine." Their site gives information abou the CISTI library and the NRC Archives, and allows access to their catalogue of serials, books, reports and conference proceedings. Citations to resources are free. Publications, reference assistance and document delivery are also available, but require payment.

CCRN-CEN Central.com: Caring for Critically Ill People
http://www.ccrn-cen-central.com/

Registered Nurses can expand their professional status and salary expectations by acquiring certification in critical care. This site provides easy access to information and practice questions for the two examinations: CCRN (Certification for Adult, Pediatric, and Neonatal Critical Care Nurses) and CEN (Certification for Emergency Nursing). The actual exams are available through other links on the page, but this nursing site makes it easy and quick to find useful information about them. The exams have a fee, but here the introductory information is free and the access is simple.

CenterWatch Clinical Trials Listing Service
http://www.centerwatch.com/

"An international listing of clinical research trials. You can use this listing to search for clinicaltrials, find out information about physicians and medical centers performing clinical research, and to learn about drug therapies newly approved by the Foodand Drug Administration. You may also sign up for an E-mail notification service, which will inform you of future postings in a particular therapeutic area."

City of Hope Pain Resource Center: Nursing Research and Education
http://cityofhope.org/prc/

"The purpose of the COHPPRC is to serve as a clearinghouse to disseminate information and resources that will enable other individuals and institutions to improve the quality of pain management. The COHPPRC, established in 1995, is a central source for collecting a variety of materials including pain assessment tools, patient education materials, quality assurance materials, research instruments and other resources." This site contains annotated bibliographies of professional print literature on pain management topics, plus a limited number of full-text and consumer-oriented resources.

Current Controlled Trials metaRegister of Controlled Trials
http://controlled-trials.com/

"The metaRegister of Controlled Trials is a searchable, international database of ongoing randomised controlled trials in all areas of healthcare. At present, the mRCT also contains some completed trials. Offering access to more than 10,000 records, the mRCT is free."

Doctor-assisted Suicide: A Guide to Web Sites and the Literature
http://www.longwood.edu/library/suic.htm

Site compiled by librarians listing resources on euthanasia and doctor assisted suicide, including legal issues, news broadcasts, a chronology, and a search engine for finding additional materials on end of life issues.

Eureka Alert
http://www.eurekalert.org/

Science, medicine, and technology news from universities, journals, government agencies, and other research organizations; also features a calendar of science events. Sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Free Medical Journals.com
http://www.freemedicaljournals.com/

"Dedicated to the promotion of free access to medical journals over the Internet." You can find journals sorted by specialty or title.

HealthJobSite.com - Healthcare Employment Directory
http://www.HealthJobSite.com/

"Features employment and career resources for nursing, allied health, pharmacy, physician, and other medical professions."

Martindale's Health Science Guide
http://www.martindalecenter.com/HSGuide.html

A "Multimedia Specialized Information Resource" with teaching files, medical cases, multimedia courses/textbooks, multimedia tutorials, databases, and movies. There are medical, administration, bioscience, chemistry, dental, graduate, nursing, nutrition, pharmacy, public health, and veterinary areas on the site as well as some general reference links to calculators, dictionaries, etc.

The Medical Algorithms Project
http://www.medal.org/

"A Medical Algorithm is any computation, formula, survey, or look-up table, useful in healthcare. We have collected over 1600 algorithms (taken from the biomedical literature, including research journals and textbooks) spanning major medical domains, organized into 43 chapters. To ensure the widest possible audience, the algorithms have been implemented in an Excel workbook which you can freely download to run on your Windows or Macintosh computer. You will need MS Excel, and should be familiar with running spreadsheets." There is also Spanish mirror site linked from this site.

Medical Breakthroughs
http://www.ivanhoe.com/home/p_home.cfm

"Breakthrough Medical News from the world's leading medical centers and research labs." Browse by topic or search.

Medical Sources and Information
http://www.ipl.org/div/pf/entry/48501

This IPL pathfinder is designed to help you find answers to medical questions. The Internet Public Library is not equipped to answer specific medical questions because we are not doctors or health professionals. The best person to ask about health matters is your physician. If you cannot get the answers you want from your doctor or if you want more information than your doctor provides, there are many print and Internet sources available, which might help you.

MedicalStudent.com
http://www.medicalstudent.com/

"Digital library of authoritative medical information designed to help all students of medicine. Provides a starting point for entry into medical places of enlightenment, entertainment and education on the Internet. Identifies authoritative medical World-Wide Web sites that can teach, illuminate, and inspire. Meant to serve as a 'pico portal' for users interested in quality medical resources on the Internet."

The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy
http://www.merck.com/mmpe/index.html

Online version of one of the most widely used medical texts in the world. Covers symptoms and treatments for an extremely broad range of diseases, disorders, and other medical conditions. Emphasis and tone is aimed at medical professionals, but laypersons will find much of use here as well.

National Guideline Clearinghouse
http://www.guideline.gov/

"A comprehensive database of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and related documents. The NGC mission is to provide physicians, nurses, and other health professionals, health care providers, health plans, integrated delivery systems, purchasers and others an accessible mechanism for obtaining objective, detailed information on clinical practice guidelines and to further their dissemination, implementation and use. Key components of NGC include: Structured abstracts (summaries) about the guideline and its development; A utility for comparing attributes of two or more guidelines in a side-by-side comparison; Syntheses of guidelines covering similar topics, highlighting areas of similarity and difference; Links to full-text guidelines, where available, and/or ordering information for print copies; An electronic forum, NGC-L for exchanging information on clinical practice guidelines, their development, implementation and use; Annotated bibliographies on guideline development methodology, implementation, and use."

NIH Consensus Development Program
http://consensus.nih.gov/

"The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Development Program is the premier health technology assessment and transfer program in American medicine. Under this program, NIH organizes major conferences that produce consensus statements resolving controversial issues in medicine important to health care providers, patients, and the general public. NIH Consensus Statements are disseminated widely to practitioners, health care policymakers, patients, the general public, and the media." Past Consensus Statements and Technology Assessment Statements can be viewed online, along with news and information on upcoming activities.

NIH Consensus Statements
http://consensus.nih.gov/PREVIOUSSTATEMENTS.htm

An NIH Consensus Statement is a report evaluating state-of-the-art scientific information on a given biomedical technology with the purpose of resolving a particular controversial issue in clinical practice. Each NIH Consensus Statement answers a series of four to six questions concerning efficacy, risk, and clinical applications, and recommends directions for future research. [They are] intended to advance understanding of the technology or issue in question and to be useful to health professionals and the public." Statements are indexed by subject and year and deal with a broad spectrum of medical topics.

Nursing, Midwifery and the Allied Health Professions
http://nmap.ac.uk/

"NMAP (Nursing, Midwifery and Allied health Professions) is a gateway to evaluated, quality Internet resources, aimed at students, researchers, academics and practitioners in the health and medical sciences."

PubMed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB=pubmed

"PubMed provides access to bibliographic information which includes MEDLINE as well as additional life science journals. MEDLINE is the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences.

"PubMed also provides access and links to the integrated molecular biology databases included in NCBI's Entrez retrieval system. These databases contain DNA and protein sequences, 3-D protein structure data, population study data sets, and assemblies of complete genomes in an integrated system. "

RXmed
http://www.rxmed.com/

A "peer-reviewed resource for primary care physicians." Includes patient handouts for over 400 illnesses and a pharmaceutical index.

TOXNET
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/

"A cluster of databases on toxicology, hazardous chemicals, and related areas." Available databases include "Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB)," "Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS)," "Chemical Carcinogenesis Research Information System (CCRIS)," "Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)," and several others, including bibliographic literature databases. A Summary Database table can help assist you in choosing an appropriate database.

The Vaccine Page
http://vaccines.com/

Annotated directory of Internet resources relating to vaccination. Includes separate sections for parents (laypersons), practitioners, and researchers.

WebMedLit
http://webmedlit.silverplatter.com/

"This is a web resource which tracks updates to 18 medical journals on the web and builds topical views from the combined tables of contents. Topical views also feature links to related news stories from PR Newswire. The journals are scanned daily and the site is updated as new content appears."

World Health Organization World Health Organization Search Portal
http://www.who.int/trialsearch/

Allows access to a database that "contains the trial registration data sets provided by Primary Registers." Users can retrieve information of each trial including inclusion and exclusion criteria and outcomes.