Search all of the Society for Participatory Medicine website:Search

As we continue our discussion of the definitions of 2.0 and user-generated content (UGC), I thought I’d highlight some other buzzwords and link to a few consumer-oriented resources.

I still trust librarians to help me judge information sources, so my first set of links are to articles that first appeared in The Journal of the Medical Library Association (and now appear on PubMed’s lovely full-text archive).

First, JMLA’s reviews of Healia and Medstory, two “vertical” search engines (meaning they aggregate and organize only health-related information). There are many more vertical search engines, but I couldn’t find any journal reviews for them — please leave a comment if you have a search site you like!

Second, a JMLA article about Electronic Book Search, a service of the Health Sciences Library System at the University of Pittsburgh (an example of a “federated” search engine, meaning they enable searches of multiple collections, not just one). Google, Yahoo, and Ask are all working on federated search (as are some smaller start-ups) so keep your eye out for more “federated” sites.

Third, Consumer Reports WebWatch has created a virtual toolkit for e-patients who are wondering how to choose between the myriad ratings, lists, and guides related to health information online, but I’m most interested to see how their new Full Frontal Scrutiny project develops since it touches on a concept that should be a buzzword: authenticity.

 

Please consider supporting the Society by joining us today! Thank you.

Donate