mother of medical search engines

[Guest guest]

THE SITE

Hungry for health info? OmniMedicalSearch.com, " a metasearch engine for the

medical search engines, " draws from 32 estimable databases, including

PubMed, MedLine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, plus

health news providers and sources of medical images.

THE WHEAT

The searches are fast and productive. Extras include a dictionary of health

terms, a list of health organization acronyms, a catalog of medical journals

and the fields they cover and, just for fun, a list of topics -- from

" hammertoes " and " discovered polydactyly " to " crotch rot " -- recently

researched by other visitors to the site.

THE CHAFF

The site's a work in progress, with some seemingly missing links. The Merck

Manual, for instance, isn't included in the main search but in a separate

listing of other " Searchable Databases. " And unless you fine-tune your

search, you may get way more info than you need, presented in no apparent

order.

FOR EXAMPLE

A general search for " common cold " turns up 110 links, starting with the

useful WebMD document " Cold Treatments, Remedies and Prevention, " followed

by a somewhat less useful listing of a clinical trial of echinacea for its

possible cold-curing abilities, some helpful cold-and-flu guidelines and,

oddly, something about breast cancer.

CLICKWORTHY

An overview section helps users tailor searches: Doctors and researchers

can target academic sources, while the general public can limit searches to

a few layman-friendly sites like WebMD. Doing so with the " common cold "

search cuts out the clinical trials and other oddball links to produce a

list of 60 useful links.