Zina Mirsky's WWW Site Evaluation

Identify Site #1

http://www.cc.emory.edu/WHSCL/medweb.html

This is MedWeb; a site of medically related "links" developed by Emory University. The site is stark and not arty in any way; it must be the subject matter that captivates continuing interest. It did for me!

Logical progression through this site:

There are a number of headline choices that will take you deeper into the materials offered. If you follow "Keyword Index" link http://www.gen.emory.edu/MEDWEB/keyword.html you will see a wide range of interest areas from which you can choose. These also are not glitzy or even very attractive visually, but they do reflects a deeper view of an area in your interest. However, choosing one because of its interest, gets you to even more direct links...for example, the option to view a "What's new" page http://www.gen.emory.edu/MEDWEB/whatsnew/day.html took me into another indicator of activity, oversight, and participation in maintenance of this web page. The options for choice are for what's new TODAY, within 7 days, within a month. Choosing "today" gives an obviously smaller offering of topic areas, but sufficient depth to show that numbers of reviewers or responsible persons are indeed paying attention to daily scanning of topics in their own interest area.

Looking through the "News" section I came to http://www.reutershealth.com/eline/ which outlines consumer-oriented health news of the day, compiled by Reuters, a respected international news agency.

Browsing through http://www2.achingback.com/achingback/ leads you to a very polished and art-laden site advertising a CDROM developed by an entrepreneurial physician and nurse team. There is educational material for the browsing "back pain patient" and a clear sales pitch for the CDROM. Not that this is bad; particularly since this team is so up-front about their connection to the final product, and does offer some information that appears to be based in current practice and orthopedic logic. But it is a clear example to me of the need to click on any option that you have that gives you identification of authors or sponsoring agents (for example, I quickly clicked here http://www2.achingback.com/achingback/B_Experts/index.html when given that alternative).

Recommendation:

I would recommend the home page of MEDWEB to any health care professional who is interested in a single bookmarked file that will branch out to meet an intellectual or professional curiosity of the day. I purposefully seek out URLs like this one to bookmark; it offers me a steady site for periodic browsing, to check out another application or to check out what's new. I respect Emory University's reputation and diligence in establishing the site, making changes over time (this is at least the second iteration of the evolution of this site that I'm aware of), and providing a quick and relatively easy access to items of interest for health care.