MEDLINEplus: MEDLINE for the masses

HEADNOTE

This site offers comprehensive, consumer-oriented health information

It seems that every month some new medical/health Web site appearsDr.com this, Medical.com that, or something of the sort. It's nice to

have all of this medical/health information-it's one of the principal research uses of the Web-but the dot-com part of it should make us all just a little bit wary. Dot-com means commercial site, which means that they're trying to sell you something, which means you have to be just a little bit skeptical about why and how the information gets there.

I'm not impugning the entire class of dot-com health-information sites. Many are highly reputable and valuable information resources. But we have our doubts about the privatization of healthcaremaybe we should think twice about the privatization of health information.

Fortunately we have strong health-information counterweights from the public sector. One of the most notable is MEDLINEpIus (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/med lineplus), the consumer health-information service from the National Library of Medicine. The MEDLINE "brand" (to borrow a bit of dot-com terminology) imparts immediate and deserved authority to MEDLINEpIus. Like MEDLINE, its counterpart for medical professionals, MEDLINEplus is comprehensive, through, thoughtfully designed, and conscientiously crafted, but it has many differences from its highly technical sibling.