AARP Health Tools

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)  now has a Health Tools page addressing with links to

• Medicare  with a search box and clickable general and specific topids
• Medicare Part D and prescription coverage
• Drug Savings Tool for finding cheaper alternatives
• Drugs A-Z to find information on prescription and over the counter medications
• Drug Compare to earn the differences and similarities between any two prescription or over-the-counter medications
• Pill Identifier to Avoid a medication mix-up. Use our tool to identify pills by color, shape and markings
• Symptom Checker – Enter your health symptoms to find out possible causes and treatments

Related Resources (from the University of Toledo Consumer Health Library Guide)

• Familydoctor.org -health information for the whole family
  Web pages include Conditions A-Z, Health Information for Seniors, Men, and Women, Healthy Living Topics, pages geared to Parents & Kids, and videos.  Numerous health tools in the left column (as health trackers, health assessments, and a Search by Symptom page. Written and reviewed by physicians and patient education professionals at the American Academy of Family Physicians.
• Mayo Clinic
  Trusted information on diseases and conditions (including a symptom checker), drugs and supplements, tests and procedures, and healthy lifestyle information. By a team of Mayo physicians, scientists, writers, and educators. 
  
• Drugs, Supplements, and Herbal Information (from a MedlinePlus page)
  Prescription and over-the-counter medication information contains answers to many general questions including topics as what a drug is used for, precautions, side effects, dietary instructions, and overdoses. From the American Society of Health System Pharmacists
• Drug Information Portal
  A good central source of drug information by the US government (the National Institutes of Health). It links you to information on over 12,000 drugs from trusted consumer drug information sources, the US Food and Drug Information, and LactMed (summary of effects on breastfeeding), It also gives any summaries from medical and toxicological articles (however, the whole article may not be for free on the Internet)
  
  

Related Articles

• Drugs: The Price Is Right (american.com)
• The New Medicare Part D: Which RA Drugs Will It Cover? (everydayhealth.com)

Electronic medical records improve quality of care in resource-limited countries, study suggests

Electronic medical records improve quality of care in resource-limited countries, study suggests

From the March 18 2011 Science Daily news item

ScienceDaily (Mar. 18, 2011) — A new study [Abstract***], conducted by researchers from the Regenstrief Institute and the schools of medicine at Indiana University and Moi University, is one of the first to explore and demonstrate the impact of electronic record systems on quality of medical care in a developing country….

…This work is particularly significant because of the many medical errors that occur in settings where too few skilled health-care providers deal with a large patient population with critical illnesses. In developed countries, patients with HIV are often seen by infectious disease specialists for their HIV care. In contrast, a large number of HIV-positive patients in resource-limited countries like Kenya are taken care of by clinical officers whose level of training is similar to that of nurse practitioners. The combination of overworked staff with limited training, increasingly busy clinics, the challenges of providing chronic disease management, and the difficulty of keeping up-to-date often results in suboptimal patient care.

***For suggestions on how to get this article for free or at low cost click here

Related articles

Towards electronic healthcare centred on the patient (Science Daily)

A vast computer based glossary of healthcare terms culled from so-called e-health tools, medical news sites, telemedicine applications, home care-management systems, internet-based public health records, and even health-oriented and medical blogs could help improve the relationship between patients and healthcare workers, according to new research.

Abstract is here

For suggestions on how to get this article for free or at low cost, click here