Endocrinology resources on the internet.

Abstract

Endocrinologists and other medical subspecialists are increasingly turning to the Internet as a resource for use in clinical practice. The latest American Medical Association Study on Physicians’ Use of the World Wide Web reported that 37% of physicians have used the Internet, a substantial increase from the number identified on a similar survey completed 2 yr earlier (1). Market research surveys report that most practitioners use the Internet to search for information about specific diseases, to look up prescribing information, and to read online versions of medical journals (2). According to these sources, a significant number of practitioners also use e-mail to communicate with patients on a regular basis (3). Endocrinologists using the Internet in clinical practice face a number of challenges. The process of finding information involves sorting through an enormous quantity of content dispersed among an estimated 100,000 web sites containing health care information (4). The problem of identifying appropriate information is compounded by the fact that it is often difficult to distinguish physician-oriented resources from patient-oriented sites on summary review. Another formidable challenge lies in assessment of the quality of information available on the Internet. As an open-access resource, the Internet does not require any validation of information posted on individual web sites. The lack of enforced standards of documentation makes it difficult to determine whether specific content is reliable enough to be used as reference material. Among medical subspecialties, endocrinology is relatively well represented on the Internet, as evidenced by the number of topical pages retrieved with different search engine queries (Table 1). By way of demonstration, a search performed with a popular search engine using the general term “thyroid” returned a count of 465,000 indexed pages (5). A similar search performed using the specific term “diabetes mellitus” returned a count of 135,000 indexed pages (6). Common endocrine topics are highly visible on most of the major consumer-oriented web sites. A number of active online interest and support groups focus on discussion of specific endocrine disorders. This level of representation probably stems from the fact that clinical practice centers on the evaluation and treatment of chronic disorders incorporating specific knowledge, specialized diagnostic testing, and use of a wide variety of pharmacological agents and treatments. A selection of freely available, nonsubscription resources that may serve as useful starting points for exploration of the Internet are listed below. These include general and medical search engines, reference resources, and compilations of practice guidelines that have been selected based on their potential utility in real-time clinical practice. A home page address is provided for each site.