The number of health web sites is daunting even for someone like me who writes about health for a living.  Now, Laura Landro who writes “The Informed Patient” column for the Wall Street Journal  has provided this handy list for some old stand-bys and some new ones. She points out that the .coms will bombard you with ads. The .govs or .orgs are  a little quieter. Check them out and let me know what you think. Do you have favorite health web sites?

 

WebMD.com—This long-time leading health-care site has added a healthy eating and diet center that includes food and fitness planners, a health-and-weight calculator that gives personal results on six different weight and fitness measurements, and a customized calorie-intake planner for weight loss.

VisualDxHealth.com—Offers some 2,000 medical images and information to help identify more than 180 skin diseases, rashes and conditions; allows searches by age, sex and body part. Interactive quizzes on recognizing skin cancer.

QualityHealth.com—Offers health-risk assessments, symptom checker, and personalized lists of questions to ask your doctor based on conditions and symptoms. Allows users to create blogs and join online communities.

Healthline.com—Includes a prescription medication image gallery; pill finder profiles to help identify medications by size, shape, color and visible markings; and new risk assessments, quizzes and calculators such as body-mass-index calculator and breast-cancer-risk assessment.

Wellsphere.com—Sends text-message reminders to go to the gym or take your medication, and sends daily health and fitness tips; allows users to log fitness goals on a mobile phone. Provides nutrition information for menu items at restaurants and suggests healthier alternatives.

RealAge.com—Interactive site offers quiz to determine biological age based on 150 questions about health status and behaviors. New heart-health checkups to gauge heart-attack risk.

Consumermedsafety.org  —This new site is sponsored by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a nonprofit watchdog group that tracks and analyzes reports, mainly from hospitals and health-care professionals, of medication errors and safety risks.

WhyNotTheBest.org —This new site from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund compares care at 4,500 hospitals nationwide, using data from Medicare’s Hospital Compare Web site and the federal government’s Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey. The site is primarily aimed at health professionals, but consumers also can readily check on their local hospitals.

hazmap.nlm.nih.gov — HazMap, a federal database, is designed to provide health and safety professionals and consumers with information about exposure to chemicals and biologic substances at work and with certain hobbies. The site recently added 180 new chemical profiles, and now covers more than 2,000 chemical agents and 225 occupational diseases. Consumers can search by symptoms or diseases.

EverydayHealth.com —The site, which recently merged with Revolution Health, links 24 separate health sites catering to various interests. The pregnancy-information site, for instance, is based on a best-selling series of books and is found at WhatToExpect.com. Another, CarePages.com, allows hospitalized patients and families to set up their own Web sites to keep relatives and friends posted on the patient’s progress.

 HealthCentral.com — This is a network of sites covering various conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and diabetes. Users can sign up for news alerts and updates, join communities and watch videos of experts discussing treatments. The home page has a cool symptom checker that can be used to check by gender and body part.

 

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under consumer health information, the web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.