HSLS Update

National Library of Medicine Enhances MedlinePlus Consumer Web Site

MedlinePlus, the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) consumer-oriented Web site, is free to the public and can be accessed from the HSLS Consumer Health Information page <www.hsls.pitt.edu/guides/chi/> or <http://medlineplus.gov>. Several recent enhancements have made MedlinePlus more visually appealing and easier to navigate, including:

Health Topics

Changes to the Health Topics page allow users to click on a picture to link to a body location/system.  For example, if you click on the heart icon next to the Health Topic Blood, Heart and Circulation, a picture of the body appears, providing a choice of links to topics on the blood, heart, veins or arteries.  If you select blood, a list of blood disorders will appear from which to choose the subtopic of interest. The familiar format of any MedlinePlus Web page remains unchanged, with headings such as Disease Management, Specific Conditions and Organizations to direct users to reliable information.

Surgery Videos

For those interested in surgical procedures there is a link to prerecorded Webcasts of actual surgeries performed at numerous U.S. medical centers.  Most videos are one hour long, with detailed explanations by surgeons as they perform the surgery.  Topics are arranged according to the body system or disease state. Procedures such as computer-assisted hip replacement surgery, minimally invasive lumbar fusion, and gastric bypass surgery are available at the click of your mouse. To link to this feature from MedlinePlus click on Surgery Videos <www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/surgeryvideos.html> and select from the list of more than 200 procedures. The surgery Webcasts are produced by OR-Live.com.

NIH MedlinePlus Magazine 

A new quarterly publication, NIH MedlinePlus <www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/magazine.html> is now available online, or can be mailed upon request. This new magazine, written for patients and their families, features the same reliable and up-to-date medical and healthcare information that is found on the MedlinePlus Web site.

--Michelle Burda