MedWorm: a medical information feed that rocks

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[RLL] MedWorm: a medical information feed that rocks

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In need of a medical information feed? Try MedWorm

By Rita L. Stanley, Ph.D.

It can be frustrating, even maddening, for a medical professional, harried

student, or concerned patient to find relevant and recent information in a

timely and organized fashion on the Internet. Searching for the latest data

on a medical condition, for treatment options for a particular cancer, or

what drug received the latest black box warnings is enough to induce a web

search headache. Take heart, MedWorm http://www.medworm.com/ may be just

want the doctor ordered to alleviate symptoms due to search fatigue,

confusion and time waste. And the side effects seem to only be a pleasant

addiction to a very useful tool indeed.

MedWorm is a medical RSS feed provider and search engine that is built on

data collected from over 5000 sources derived from RSS feeds. RSS

http://www.medworm.com/rss/whatisrss.php stands for Really Simple

Syndication and is a rapid way to find information on the Internet. What you

end up with following a brief query at MedWorm is a short list of headlines

and summaries along with the links to full articles for whatever specific

area of interest you search. The end result: researching complex medical

issues is streamlined in an ultra efficient manner to provide you with

immediate relevant output. Really.

The best way to understand how to use MedWorm is to give it a go. If you're

interested in learning about the latest research on, say, Lyme disease,

start at the MedWorm homepage http://www.medworm.com/ . Go down the short

list of medical topics and click on the link for infectious diseases; then

click on the link for Lyme disease. You'll be taken to a continually updated

page with headlines, summaries and links to full articles about the

infection. It really is as easy as that. Interested in the latest research

on the drug Levaquin? Go to the homepage, click on the drugs link, and the

rest is straight forward.

ie Dolan, a UK based IT (information technology) developer who built

and owns the site, explains, " Since medical professionals are constantly in

need of the latest information on medical research and the best methods of

treatment, and are also usually overworked with little time to spare, RSS

seemed ideal since it could provide the very latest information that is both

concise and highly relevant to a specific area of expertise. "

The RSS feed provider is a free resource, and Dolan intends to keep it that

way. He continues to update the site, add new categories, and he welcomes

input and feedback that users may wish to offer.

He says, " I believe that as more physicians, health care workers and those

in medical research start to make use of RSS, medicine will see huge leaps

forward as the flow of the right information getting to the right people

vastly improves. It can also be instrumental in providing patients with the

additional information they are rightly hungry for when faced with illness.

I am very excited about how MedWorm can contribute to this process. "

Check out MedWorm at http://www.medworm.com and see how pain-free

researching medical topics can be.

Rita L. Stanley, Ph.D. is a free-lance writer and the coauthor of

" Confronting Lyme Disease: What Patient Storeis Teach Us " . She can be

reached at RLStanley@...