SDN Collection of Healthcare Resources

[Lawpy]

Back in 09/2006, @mshheaddoc had requested to create a comprehensive sticky containing online resources pertaining to various healthcare topics. This project is noteworthy since many forums on SDN have several threads that actively discuss contemporary healthcare issues, so having a general collection of links will be useful for anyone interested to know more about these topics at hand.

Unfortunately, the last response in the project was from 09/2011. With permission from SDN Volunteer Staff, I have decided to revive the project and establish a detailed framework for the list of links I found. I also used many of the links from the previous thread while eliminating dead and outdated links. This thread will be regularly updated with new links and categories (especially for other healthcare professions like dentistry, optometry, pharmacy etc.)

The collection is arranged as the following:

General Healthcare Information

Official sites are usually one of the most reliable places to acquire and understand healthcare information.

• National Institutes of Health
• National Library of Medicine
• World Health Organization
• Department of Health & Human Services
• Healthfinder (reliable health information for consumers)
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Food and Drug Administration
• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Health News

This category can be divided into two groups: news for general audience and news for healthcare providers.

General News

• Wall Street Journal Health News
• The Economist Health and Fitness Reports
• BBC Health News (as well as news from the US media counterparts: CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC)
• Reuters Health News
• Kaiser Health News

Healthcare Provider News

• MedlinePlus
  
• Medscape
• Physician's Briefing
• AMA Wire (from the American Medical Association; good for students too)
• ScienceDaily
• Nature News (also includes news in other sciences)

Medical Research Journals

The MEDLINE/PubMed Resources Guide is the standard resource for finding research articles. QxMD has an app called Read by QxMD that allows you to read research articles from journals of your choice on the go (available on Android, iPhone, and iPad).

Nevertheless, some popular medical journals are listed below for your reference:

• New England Journal of Medicine
• Journal of the American Medical Association
• The BMJ
• The Lancet
• Nature (as well as Nature Medicine and Nature Reviews)
• Science (and Science Translational Medicine)
• Cell (as well as Cancer Cell, Neuron and Cell Stem Cell)

Bioethics

The online resources below examine various ethical issues in healthcare and provide case studies to have a sharper insight.

• ACP Ethics Manual, Sixth Edition (provided by American College of Physicians and Annals of Internal Medicine)
• AMA Code of Medical Ethics (by the American Medical Association)
• Bioethics Website
• Bioethics Topics and Principles of Bioethics (by the University of Washington School of Medicine)
• MedlinePlus Resources on Medical Ethics
• Medscape Ethics Center

History of Medicine

The following resources are divided into two categories: history of diseases and history of specialties.

History of Diseases

• Historical Summary of Diseases and Epidemics
• CNN Report on Deadly Diseases Throughout History
• History of Anthrax, Malaria, Plague, Smallpox (by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• History of Cancer
• History of HIV and AIDS
• History of Heart Disease and History of Heart Attack
• History of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
• History of Alzheimer's Disease
• History of Parkinson's Disease

History of Specialties

• History of Anesthesia
• History of Cardiology (and pdf) and Cardiology's 10 Greatest Discoveries of 20th Century (and pdf)
• History of Critical Care
• History of Emergency Medicine (and pdf)
• History of Family Medicine (presentation and timeline)
• History of Gastroenterology (and pdf)
• History of Hematology (and pdf)
• History of Hospice and Palliative Care
• History of Immunology (by Columbia University) and History of Vaccines
• History of Neuroscience
• History of Obstetrics and Gynecology
• History of Ophthalmology (and timeline)
• History of Pathology (and pdf)
• History of Pediatrics (by the American Academy of Pediatrics)
• History of Psychiatry
• History of Radiation Oncology
• History of Radiology
• History of Rheumatology
• History of Sleep Medicine (and pdf)
• History of Surgery (and pdf; by the New England Journal of Medicine)
• History of Urology
• History of Vascular Surgery (by the Society for Vascular Surgery)

Healthcare Policy

The widely recommended book to learn about healthcare policy is Understanding Health Policy: A Clinical Approach, Seventh Edition by Thomas Bodenheimer and Kevin Grumbach.

Free online resources can be categorized as the following:

General Healthcare Policy

• Khan Academy Tutorials on the US Healthcare System
• The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• Brookings Institution
• Physicians for a National Health Program
• Cato Institute
• The Commonwealth Fund
• Council on Health Care Economics and Policy at Brandeis University
• HealthAffairs
• RAND Corporation

Healthcare Reform

• Brief History of Healthcare Reform: From Truman to Obama Administrations
• AARP Guide to Understanding Medicare
• Why Medicaid Matters (Fact Sheet by Kaiser Family Foundation)
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• Patient's Guide to HIPAA: Index of FAQs (by World Privacy Forum)
• Summary of the Affordable Care Act (by Kaiser Family Foundation)
• Affordable Care Act Explained by Medicaid

Health Economics

A good place to start exploring and learning about health economics is reading Kenneth Arrow's groundbreaking 1963 research article Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care.

The subcategories include:

General Health Economics

• Health Economics Information Resources (by US National Library of Medicine)
• Health Economics Resource Center
• Institute of Health Economics
• RAND Articles on Health Economics
• NBER Papers in Health Economics
• Public Health Economics and Methods (by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

Health Insurance

• Investopedia Introduction to Insurance
• Econlib Article on Insurance
• Econlib Article on Health Insurance
• Health Insurance Guides
• How Private Health Coverage Works: A Primer - 2008 Update (and pdf)
• Understanding Health Insurance
• Asymmetric Information Theory
• Adverse Selection vs Moral Hazard

Pharmaceuticals

• Essential Medicines and WHO Model Lists
• The Economist Pharmaceutical Reports
• Econlib Article on Pharmaceuticals
• 2006 NBER Article on Economics of the Pharmaceutical Industry
• MDS-3: Managing Access to Medicines and Health Technologies (and pdf)
• OECD Pharmaceutical Pricing Policies in a Global Market (and pdf)

I hope you find this useful! I will continue updating this thread with more resources.

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[Lawpy]

Saving this post just in case.

 

[stilllovegreys]

Thank you so much!

 

[Papa Oso]

Good stuff! Thank you for this awesome list! Definitely helps for interviews. 🙂

 

[Lawpy]

April Update: several major updates and restructuring changes made; expanded the History of Medicine section to focus on History of Diseases (more links will be added) and History of Specialties (to correspond to the specialties in the Physician/Resident Forums). Some specialties don't have links yet but will be added soon. I will also add other categories such as Public Health and Health Technology.

Admittedly, the collection is focused primarily on medicine due to my limited knowledge of other healthcare fields, but I'll expand the collection to be more comprehensive once I have a better understanding. As always, feel free to PM me on what you find and I'll add it to the thread. Thanks!

 

[WaffleSyrup]

Thanks for this comprehensive list! It's pretty amazing. Thanks for keeping it updated too. It's appreciated!

 

[mscandy]

This is so useful. That you so much!