The Medical Drug Reference program from Parsons Technology is a usefool tool both for physicians and patients. You can download or order the application to then install it on your machine. The drug database is very up to date so that reliable information on drug effects, interactions etc. is available. The program costs $29.

Mediconsult.com is a very comprehensive medical website that caters primarily to patients but also contains valuable information for medical professionals. You will need a few clicks to get used to the this large site, but it is well worth it: there is drug information, a journal club, an overview of current clinical trials, etc. In MediXperts a patient can contact a specialist in the field of his/her disease and receive a confidential consultation over the Net for $195.

The Bad Heilbrunner Selbstmedikationsdatenbank (Bad Heilbrunn Self-Medication Database) contains information on the usage, the effects, etc. of 182 medicinal plants, vitamins, minerals and trace elements. Every entry is illustrated with a picture or a graphic; you can browse or search the database.

Discussions on bioethical topics moderated by Dr. M. Bernstein. You can take part in the discussions via email; the online community is also invited to take part in polls on bioethical issues, such as euthanasia.

For once you do not have to read anything in the Site of the Week! EuroTransMed offers medical lectures in RealAudio format. You can listen to broadcasts live or access past lectures in the database. The lectures are accompanied by slide shows in the browser that provide you with all the relevant graphics, tables and statistics. There is also a possibility to order video tapes of the EuroTransMed lectures.

Achoo is a kind of Yahoo for the medical internet. Click on "search" in the navigation bar to reach the search interface. Alternatively, you can also browse the directories or visit the sites of the week. The news section is divided into over 150 topics.

This site contains resources on "Genetics and Public Issues"; it is maintained by the National Center for Genome Resources. In the Genetic Odyssey branch of the site, genetic angles of certain diseases (e.g. breast cancer or diabetes) are explored. There are also links to a collection of genetics related articles from the general the press (cf. Genetics in the News).

This page from the Hewlett-Packard website not only contains information on different medical software packages (e.g. patient monitoring) but it also has a section with daily news from the healthcare industry.

This is D. Jenkins' and S. Gerred's private homepage. Image files of approximately 30 different ECGs (fron 8 categories) can be viewed. The patients' age and sex are indicated and the abnormalities are explained in 2 to 3 sentences.

This French site offers weekly epidemiologic information bulletins. Sentinelles, a monthly publication also available on this site, deals with one transmittable disease in every issue. There are also small animations of the spread of past influenza epidemics in France.

Safetyline is an Australian website on safety at the work place. The site does not specifically cater to physicians but it contains many health related topics. An array of documents on the proper handling of different work situations can be accessed (in pdf format).

Here, physiscians and students learn to understand and interpret Pulmonary Function Tests. The lesson is divided in several exercises that will give you a deeper understanding of this element of clinical respiratory medicine. The site was created by LUMEN, the Loyola University Medical Education Network.

Hepatology is the official jounral of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. The site contains the abstracts of the Hepatology articles from the last two years. Furthermore, it also provides reviews of hepatology related studies from other sources.

To fully view the Visible Human Project you need a Java-enabled browser. This is a webpage with a good medical multimedia application. Slices of the human body can be accessed and viewed on three different axes. You can position the axes to the plane that you are interested in and then download the image files, the quality of which is quite high.

Mirror site in Germany
Mirror site in France

This webpage contains a comprehensive list of medical shareware products and many other indices and classifications. The site caters specifically to physicians interested in computing (site in German).

This entertaining website from Trauma.org gives the visitor the possibility to play through two trauma scenarios online. You are the doctor and you try to save the patient's life by taking the right decision at the right time.

MentalHealth.com is an interesting psychiatry website that caters primarily to the general public. It contains a drug guide and a reference manual for psychiatric disorders. You can even diagnose disorders online.

This is the gateway to the different FDA websites (e.g. Human Drugs, Toxicology, Foods etc.). Most of the links are worth exploring; the FDA Medical Bulletin can also be found here.

CancerNet from the National Cancer Institute is an informative no frills website that does wihtout unnecessary graphic embellishments. In the Health Professionals part of the site visitors can find information on treatment, prevention, supportive care and clinical trials relating to cancer.

The Journal of the National Cancer Institute is one of the most important journals in the area of clinical cancer research. You can subscribe to a mailing list that will keep you up to date on the most recent contents. You can also download a sample issue of the JNCI in pdf format.

The health section of the Baby Bag website contains many links to articles on babies' health issues. It also offers the possibility to ask specialists (e.g. midwife, pharmacist) baby-related questions.

The combination of two anorectic agents (fenfluramin and phentermin, hence fen-phen) can cause valvular heart defects. This was discovered by scientists at the Mayo Clinic. This seems to be big enough news for the New England Journal of Medicine to agree to an early publication of the study (it was to appear in the August issue of the journal).

The website of the Swiss Medical Weekly contains, amongst other things, its Coups d'śil which focus on rather unusual medical occurences. This particular article contains an image of a wasp lodged in the patient's lung.

The Alzheimer's Disease Review provides a wealth of information on Alzheimer's Disease. The texts from the Review are available in HTML and PDF formats; with a (free) subscription you can have the articles sent to your mailbox.

A biannual journal published by the Johns Hopkins Osler Medical Housestaff that appears exclusively on the Net. This article introduces and explores the new possibilities of medical information retrieval from the Net.

HMS Beagle is an electronic journal that deals primarily with medical research; it also contains summaries of several medical journals. Membership is required but free.

Cyberounds publishes papers of well-known medical academics and opens them up to discussion on the Web. Visitors are encouraged to take part in the many ongoing discussions. There are 15 different "conferences" in which a topic from a medical specialty field is discussed.

Online version of the journal by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The web version contains both abstracts and full text articles for free.

Information on tobacco, nicotine and smoking. Plenty of information for smokers who want to quit their habit.

Homepage for a newsletter that is dedicated women's health problems, e.g. heart diseases, cancer, etc.

This is the homepage of the British Medicines Control Agency; it contains full text articles of the most recent issues of "Currrent Problems". There is useful information on present side-effects.

The Japanese Bull-Monster Ushioni decorates this site which contains information on trauma and emergency medecine.

Everything on myeloic leukemia. Information for laymen and specialists. This link no longer works.

A regular orthopedics/traumatology text book. You start out with a clickable skeleton from where you reach the respective chapters by clicking on a part of the body.

Diverse site with many links and commented summaries of important studies (similar to infomed-screen).

The first four weeks of human life, very instructive presentation.

Not only for dermatologists: a wealth of carefully catalogued images of many skin diseases (University of Erlangen, Germany).

How does one best use original research on clinical studies? This is an online guide from McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, one of the centers of „evidence based medicine”.

An article from "Science": This is a rather critical text that is fraught with numerous good URLs to "neuroscience" websites. This link is outdated; unfortunately, "Science" no longer offers its articles free of charge on the Net.