Medical Resources

New Online EM Textbook a Hit

Physicians and laypersons alike are touting a new source for medical information on the Internet. The company is called Emedicine and their website (http://www.emedicine.com) contains the world's first free online Emergency Medicine textbook. With more than 8,000 pages and authored and edited by 400 emergency physicians, it is a complete medical reference for physicians to access from all over the globe.

"The online environment offers a number of distinct advantages," said Scott Plantz, MD FAAEM, one of the emergency physicians who helped spearhead the project. "Our textbook can be improved or updated 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without the challenges and delays associated with the printing and dissemination of traditional textbooks. Through hundreds of e-mail links to our authors and editors, readers can instantly send comments, questions, pictures, and x-rays for review and possible inclusion. The information is constantly being updated and expanded."

"We are very grateful to the physician authors and editors who donated over 30,000 hours to make this project a reality," Dr. Plantz said. "It is a first for Medicine and a first for Emergency Medicine. We should all be very proud of this achievement."

The Emergency Medicine textbook has already received thousands of visits from physicians, health care professionals, and the public in hospitals and homes worldwide, and more volumes covering other medical specialties are already in production. Dermatology, Surgery, Neurology, Pediatrics, Ophthalmology, Internal Medicine—they will all soon be available, like Emergency Medicine, free-of-charge to medical practitioners and the public at the site.

According to some analysts, about 40% of all Internet searches are based on medical questions. Most of the health information currently available stops short of suggesting treatment options, but these online textbooks, like those in public libraries, go into detail other sites avoid. There is information on specific drug dosages, required tests, and thousands of x-rays, color illustrations, and pictures.

"Our goal," said Jonathan Adler, MD FAAEM, editor-in-chief of the Emergency Medicine text, "is to provide the practicing emergency physician with an easy and reliable source for information on all aspects of Emergency Medicine." Even a short tour of the topics available, from emergency medical systems to epidemiology, from managing an emergency department to legal problems in Emergency Medicine, in addition to the more than 600 medical topics, indicates they have done just that.