Lookup sites for writers and editors
Medical writers and editors keep a set of websites and apps to hand for the checks of a working day: verifying a reference, settling the spelling or usage of a term, and looking up drugs, side effects, trials, guidelines, diseases, anatomy and genetic terms.
References and articles
PubMed's Single Citation Matcher has search boxes for journal name, year (month and day optional), volume, issue and first page, author name (with options to limit the search to the first- or last-named author) and title words, so a reference can be verified from limited information. In 2017 one medical editor who checks medical writers' work used it every day, as a home page. The same editor used PDF Unlock every day or nearly every day; it removes passwords and restrictions from secured PDF files and links to a free converter from a web page to a PDF file.
PubMed Central is a free archive of peer-reviewed medical articles maintained by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Library of Medicine, fully searchable by several parameters, with free full-text links cited when available. One medical writer who consulted it frequently in 2017 held that most medical writers should know it.
Terms, spelling and usage
In 2017 MediLexicon linked to definitions of medical abbreviations, a medical dictionary, drugs, medical equipment and devices, hospitals by location or name, ICD codes and medical news, and the editor who used it every day or nearly every day called it a great first place to search for basic information. That editor rarely looked up words in a hardcopy dictionary, had Stedman's Medical Spellchecker loaded on the computer, and used the Merriam-Webster site, which also has a thesaurus, to verify the spelling and hyphenation of everyday terms. Oxford University Press's dictionary site is helpful for looking up British and American English terms. The editor found the subscription site of the AMA Manual of Style, then in its 10th edition, from the AMA and Oxford University Press, excellent for keeping up with the latest terminology by searching terms on the fly, and also kept the hardcopy manual on the desk for flipping pages or consulting dog-eared Post-it notes in it.
Asked in 2008 which resources to recommend, one medical writer named Google first, having learned adverse event terms, generic names of drugs and interpretations of laboratory tests from it.
The NIH's Talking Glossary of Genetic Terms, as described in 2010, is designed for a wide audience, from people learning what a gene is to people learning what a microbiome is. Users can click to hear the pronunciation of each term, and in short audio clips NIH scientists explain the term in their own words, expanding on the written definition. Entries for some terms include images, 3-D animation and links to related terms.
Drugs and side effects
Drugs.com is an independent medicine information website on prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicines and natural products, with data from validated sources such as Micromedex, Cerner Multum, Wolters Kluwer and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. A writer who consulted it frequently in 2017 found it a great source of information on the latest drugs.
The Side Effect Resource, as described in 2010, is a free database of all reported side effects of marketed drugs, based on package inserts and other public documents. It can be searched inversely, from a side effect such as cataracts to the drugs that are its most common culprits. Such a search also shows which drugs are indicated for treating that condition, and those indications call for care over the country they hold in and whether the list is up to date.
Trials, guidelines and diseases
ClinicalTrials.gov is the NIH registry of publicly and privately supported international clinical studies, searchable by topic or study name. In 2017 it listed clinical studies with locations in all 50 states and 195 countries, and it listed publications for the trials, which one writer had not found to be comprehensive. In 2017 Guideline.gov, created by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, was a fully searchable public resource for summaries of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, categorised by clinical specialty. It included international guidelines, which a user should keep in mind, and results could be filtered to US-based organisations only. UpToDate is an evidence-based, physician-authored clinical decision support resource used by many physicians that gives current information on the disease, treatment and available guidelines, but its full articles need a subscription.
Depending on the disease state, the same writer also consulted disease-specific organisations' websites, such as the American Diabetes Association's or the National Cancer Institute's. The Centers for Disease Control is helpful for statistical information on various disease states, and that writer found Medscape a great resource on multiple levels.
Anatomy
Healthline's human body maps, online in 2011, are models of human anatomy that are 3D after a fashion. A male or female model can be rotated, one of the major organ systems chosen with a click, and a body area moused over for a closer view and descriptive text. The maps are designed for an educated lay audience and should also be useful to many medical communicators.
Apps
In 2011 six free apps of general interest to medical communicators were released: for iOS, MedPage Today, Medscape Mobile, the Micromedex drug reference, NEJM This Week and PubMed Mobile, and for the Android Market, WebMD. Apple's iTunes Room for Healthcare, new in 2011, collected the apps Apple considered most valuable for clinicians, plus some for the public. Many of them were reference and educational apps of interest to medical communicators, and its links worked in the United States and Canada only.