How to find medical information

Find medical and health information from reputable web resources, and from books and journal databases at the State Library of Victoria.

In the media - hype or hope?

The media regularly reports on the latest new medical discovery, another 'cure for cancer', yet another fad diet to fight obesity, or a scary new virus. The tabloid papers and current affair television programmes are obvious exemplars of this type of reporting, but are certainly not the only ones.

How are you, as the ordinary consumer, to assess the accuracy of these reports? The following two resources have been established to examine health stories in the media and evaluate the quality of the reporting:

Health News Review
A US based site which evaluates the quality of health news stories. Not-for-profit site, and no advertising. It uses a standardised rating scale, and also presents reviews of good and bad examples of reports.

NHS Choices: behind the headlines
Produced by Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS). Examines the quality of news reporting of health stories.

And what about the web?

The web is filled with hundreds of thousands of pages on all possible subjects. Some of it comes from expert sources, based on years of expertise, research and evaluation. But much does not.

There are several criteria you can use when looking at a website to consider how much value you should place in its content. Question you should ask include: Who created the site? Is it a commercial site? Are they trying to sell you something? How up to date is it?

For more comprehensive advice on this, there are useful guides available online. For example:

How to assess health information online
Published by Healthdirect, the Australian government's health portal.

MedlinePlus - Evaluating health information
A comprehensive guide to learning how to improve your ability to find quality health information. Also includes an online tutorial to finding health information on the internet.