Patient-centered Resources:
Online Resources for Patients, Clinicians & Others

newest
03/18/09: New Zealand Guidelines Group Risk Calculator for Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease

Important Information

• Not all clinical recommendations from other sources have been reviewed for validity and ours may or may not be uptodate, so selections below should be viewed as representing examples of approaches and formats for communications, etc. Feel free to contact us for details.
• Stars indicate our favored sources that we use regularly, yet this should not be considered to be an endorsement of any site, nor a claim that everything in the site is of the highest quality.
• Read our Health Care Information Source Cautions at Notices, a key point being that all sources should be considered to potentially vary in quality. We recommend you audit each topic.
• You may need to update information from the date of the topic's search.
• Some services may be available by subscription only.

Contents      

• BMJ BestTreatments
• Cochrane Informed Health Online — Cochrane summaries for patients
• Consumer Reports "Best Buy Drug"
• DIPEx — Illness information for patients including their experiences
• Medline Plus
• New Zealand Guidelines Group Risk Calculator for Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease
• RegenceRx®: Pharmacy Benefit Management drug review summaries

BMJ BestTreatments

Available through licensure only: This site is meeting a huge information need by providing relevant, valid information to patients and to clinicians. It includes information on various conditions, a section on decision aids and understanding risk, information about alternative medicine and online classes. This is exactly what we've been professing — patients and healthcare professionals should be on the same evidence-based page.

Like Clinical Evidence, BestTreatments classifies information using the following categories:
• Treatments that work
• Treatments that are likely to work
• Treatments that work, but whose harms may outweigh benefits
• Treatments that are unlikely to work
• Treatments that are likely to be ineffective or harmful

Direct Link to Sample Information from BestTreatments from the BMJ based on Clinical Evidence
https://www.besttreatments.org/Unified/CDA/HP/tmpl/HPIndex/

About BestTreatments
http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7391/674?eaf

A group called Informed Health Online based in Melbourne, Australia provides evidence-based information for patients, clinicians and others. It is a non-profit foundation found at http://www.informedhealthonline.org/item.aspx

This is a nice website for consumers because it summarizes systematic reviews from Cochrane (abstracts of Cochrane Reviews are available without charge). The nice thing about this site is that you can get to the abstracts of Cochrane Reviews and the consumer summaries from one website and it is free.

Consumer Reports "Best Buy Drugs"

The mission of the Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs project is to provide consumers and their doctors with information to help guide prescription drug choices–based on effectiveness, a drug's track record, safety and price.

This appears to be a good source of information since it is based on the work of the Oregon Health & Science University Evidence-based Practice Center which uses a rigorous approach to evaluating science.

http://www.bestbuydrugs.org

DIPEx

Illness information for patients, including patients talking about their experiences with illness, can be found at this site. Many of the modules are produced by professionals involved with the Cochrane Collaboration. The site provides patients with information by condition, but also through interviews with patients that you can hear directly online. It also provides information about other resources available to patients.

http://www.dipex.org

Medline Plus provides extensive, “authoritative” information from National Library of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health and other trusted sources on over 650 diseases and conditions. Included are a medical encyclopedia and a medical dictionary, extensive information on prescription and nonprescription drugs, health information from the media, and links to thousands of clinical trials. There is no advertising on the site, nor does MEDLINEplus endorse any company or product. Although the site uses criteria, it should be noted that there is no critical appraisal of the information for validity.

Key criteria for information and links include:

• Quality, authority and accuracy of content (again, caution because there is no critical appraisal of the information for validity).
  • The source of the content is established, respected and dependable. A list of advisory board members or consultants is published on the site.
  • The information provided is appropriate to the audience level, well-organized and easy to use.
  • Information is from primary resources (i.e., textual material, abstracts, web pages).
  • Lists of links are evaluated/reviewed/quality-filtered.
• The primary purpose of the web page is educational.
• Information is current or an update date is included.
• Registration is not required to view the information on the site.

http://www.medlineplus.gov

03/18/09: Here is the New Zealand Guidelines Group risk calculator for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. Typically, a cardiac risk calculator provides an estimate (either 5 or 10 years) of an individual's risk of experiencing an adverse cardiac event based on specific risk factors. For example, the New Zealand risk tables provide a 5-year assessment based on an individual’s sex, diabetic status, smoking history and age. It also provides an estimate of benefit (CVD events prevented per 100 people) treated with blood pressure agents, aspirin and lipid-lowering agents for 5 years based on risk level.

Avoid ones that present data for 10 years — they are extrapolated from 5-year evidence and, therefore, are not valid. This is the real thing. You can find it through our weblinks at New Zealand Guidelines Group or Cardiovascular Disease Primary Prevention Risk Calculator.

http://www.nzgg.org.nz/guidelines/0035/CVD_Risk_Chart.pdf

RegenceRx®: Pharmacy Benefit Management

We know of no group that does a better job of critical appraisal and applying evidence-based medicine principles. Plus they make summaries of their drug reviews freely available online.

For clinicians:
RxNews
http://www.regencerx.com/meet/physicianNews/index.html
Drug Review Summaries
http://www.regencerx.com/learn/physicianRx/index.html

For consumers:
http://www.regencerx.com/prescriptions/physicianTools/consumer/index.html

Read more about our work with them here »