Searching for Disease Specifics? Start Here
It’s not fancy or flashy. In fact, at first glance it might look a tad dull.
But Medical Matrix (https://www.medmatrix.org) is a site worth exploring, and it’s a great place to begin your online health searches. If you don’t know where to start your search, or the right questions to ask, Medical Matrix is an excellent road map to help get you on your way.
Although its home page consists primarily of a box with topics and numbers next to them, those links take you to a wealth of high-quality health care information. After all, when it’s about your health, who really wants bells and whistles?
Think of Medical Matrix as a searchable directory of online medical resources. The site uses icons and keyword searches to allow you to easily locate information. It’s designed primarily for doctors and other health care professionals--in fact, three out of four visitors to the site are in the health care field.
For that reason, if you’re seeking general health information on a popular topic, such as asthma, diabetes or heart disease, you may be better off going to such sites as Healthfinder, MayoHealth and Onhealth, all of which have been reviewed in this column.
But for in-depth, high-quality, medical resources, this is the place to start your searches. My strategy is to just skip over any stuff I can’t decipher.
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Medical Matrix is a gateway to more than 4,000 peer-reviewed health care resources. A 14-member editorial board that includes doctors, academics and medical editors must approve the sites, which are ranked based on the quality and reliability of the information, multimedia features, ease of navigation and other criteria. One star represents a site with “suitable clinical content, well-authored and maintained,” and five stars will get you an “award-winning site.” Two and three star sites are also valuable resources; nothing here is poor quality.
Medical Matrix is well-organized, dividing its more than 4,000 sites by specialty, disease, publications, clinical practice, education, health care professionals and technology. You can search by topic area (there are 93 entries listed under the oncology specialty area) or by using the search box at the top of the page (there were 192 items listed when I searched using “cancer” as the keyword). Results are organized even further by the categories and topics listed on the home page (News, Abstracts, Journals, Pediatrics, Gynecology, etc.).
I did a search on ovarian cancer and found seven items, including the National Institutes of Health’s statement on ovarian cancer, a guide to patient care and a continuing medical education course for doctors. As I mentioned, this site is designed with docs in mind, but it’s easy enough to skip over what’s not relevant to you.
I’m still searching for information on human growth hormone deficiency (as I mentioned in my last column, my son was recently diagnosed with this condition), so I typed in those keywords. The search did not produce any results, but it took me to Medical World Search (https://www.mwsearch.com), another site that searches about 100,000 Web pages from medical sites, including Medline. What a find! The first entry returned, “Is Growth Hormone an Effective Treatment for Short Children?” is the exact question I’ve been trying to get answered.
The Patient Education section (one of nine features at the top of the screen) is a terrific resource, providing sites for searches, news and a home medical guide. You can also access an extensive list of resources and sites about prescription drugs and online symposiums. There were three symposiums available, the most recent from October, on renal disease, heart disease and hepatitis C.
I do have one caveat. As good as the evaluators are, nothing will substitute for taking the time to review the sites yourself. With so many previously independent Internet sites being bought up by larger companies, it’s a good idea to pay attention to who’s running the site because that could influence the content.
Medical Matrix has a fairly quick registration process, and it promises to use the personal information you type in only for improving the site.
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And now, if I may stray briefly from health topics. I recently attended an Internet workshop, where I met a man who covers the Internet for NBC-TV Newschannel. He discussed some of his favorite sites and Internet tools, including https://www.pcmike.com. I searched the site later and was reminded of the impact that the Internet has had on our vocabulary. Here’s one excerpt from the site:
“Remember when . . . a computer was something on TV from a science fiction show of note? A window was something you hated to clean? And RAM was the cousin of a goat? An application was for employment? A program was a TV show? A cursor used profanity? A keyboard was a piano?”
So enjoy your online explorations. Perhaps we’ll find some health care humor, too.
(Note to readers: Thanks to all of you who have sent me mail and suggested sites for review. While I can’t respond to all my mail, I do plan to review some of the sites you have suggested in a future column. If you’d like a site considered for review, please send your recommendations by April 10 to the e-mail address listed at the end of this column.)
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Marla Bolotsky is managing editor and director of online information for the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. She can be reached by e-mail at marla.bolotsky@latimes. com.
* Your Health Online runs every other Monday in Health.
