Web Site Offers Reliable Medical News

The next time you visit your doctor, he might hand you a different kind of prescription – one for a Web site.

As part of a trial marketing campaign, the National Library of Medicine and the American Medical Association are giving doctors in Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties free “prescription pads” that recommend visiting www.medlineplus.gov, the library’s health information Web site.

The campaign is targeting Alzheimer’s patients, but anyone can participate. The kickoff was Friday at the Kravis Center.

The free Web site – which sells nothing and has no advertisers or sponsors – is updated daily and contains a myriad of information on more than 700 diseases and conditions as well as prescription and nonprescription drugs.

It was born out of a similar government Web site created for doctors looking for the latest medical research.

Library spokeswoman Kathy Cravedi said the marketing campaign is aimed at giving doctors somewhere to send the increasing number of patients who are culling information from the Internet.

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that two-thirds of Baby Boomers – age 50 to 64 – have been online and more than half think the health information online is accurate.

“They wanted to give the doctors something they feel comfortable with,” Cravedi said. “We’re very careful about what we will point to as a reliable source of information.”

– Stephanie Horvath