Health Online: How To Find Health Information, Support Groups, And Self Help Communities In Cyberspace [Paperback]

Tom Ferguson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 13, 1996

Health Online turns a computer into your most important health tool. For newcomers, it makes going online easy by explaining e-mail and showing what’s on the big commercial online services. Later chapters explore Internet mailing lists, newsgroups, and World Wide Web pages. Even online veterans will benefit from the book’s listings of hundreds of health resources, especially self-help support groups. Health Online finds the healing power of electronic networks not in technology or data, but in the worldwide community of people helping each other.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Find health information and support groups on the Internet via this guide, which lists bulletin boards, news groups, and information-sharing programs available through Prodigy, CompuServe, and others. Keys to locating health databases are also provided in this fine computer reference, tailored to consumer use. -- Midwest Book Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1 edition (March 13, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201409895
• ISBN-13: 978-0201409895
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,878,844 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Face-to-Face Is Not Enough, November 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Health Online: How To Find Health Information, Support Groups, And Self Help Communities In Cyberspace (Paperback)

Between 7:00pm and 1:00am is a good time to get answers to a health care system moving from the traditional office face-to-facing with doctors to self-managed lay medicine online. A good way to surf these Internet health and medical resources is by signing up with a computer network, such as America Online, CompuServe, Delphi, eWorld, Genie, Microsoft Windows 95, Prodigy, The Well, or Women's Wire. Self-helpers can then access such biomedical databases as the HealthNet Reference Library, Information USA/health, and Medline; Internet mailing lists, such as HMATRIX-L's popular and professional resources for laypeople and professionals; the Medical Support Bulletin Board; the Medical Matrix gopher site; the MedWeb free medical library; and USENET newsgroups. Such directories and search engines as InternetSleuth, the Multimedia Medical Reference Library, and the Whole Internet Catalog of Health can find relevant web sites ranging from Good Medicine alternative and mainstream medical practices, to Internet Vet, PharmInfoNet, Traveler's Choice worldwide health conditions, and Yahoo/health.

Or a health information broker---such as The Health Resource Inc., Med Help International, and Plane Tree Health Resource Center---could be hired to do all the footwork. Or a non-digital start would be to call the Self-Help Clearinghouse and to read THE SELF-HELP SOURCEBOOK. This self-help focus by author and physician Tom Ferguson works well with John M. Grohol's THE INSIDER'S GUIDE TO MENTAL HEALTH RESOURCES ONLINE. Readers trying to pool as much Internet health and medical information as possible could also look to Bruce Maxwell's HOW TO FIND HEALTH INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET and MOSBY'S MEDICAL SURFARI.