On-line Resources
On-line Resources
There’s a wealth of information on diabetes out there, if you know where to look for it. The Internet can give you and your patients as much information about diabetes as you could possibly want. The experts say professionals can keep themselves up to speed, ask questions, get continuing medical education credits, answer patients’ questions, and even direct them to sites where they can learn diabetes management skills themselves. Diabetes Management asked two experts in the field for their recommendations.
Michael J. Ackerman, PhD, assistant director for high performance computing and communications at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, MD, says there is a great deal of material available. Here are his suggestions for the most helpful sites:
http://www.diabetesnet.com. This commercial site contains large amount of information, ranging from shopping at The Diabetes Mall to the latest news and research results to information on alternative therapies. It’s easy to read, consumer- oriented with much information of interest to professionals.
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/ddt. This is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s diabetes Web page containing statistics, frequently asked questions for patients, and access to dozens of free government publications, both on-line and by mail. The site is professionally oriented, but may be helpful to highly motivated patients.
http://childrenwithdiabetes.com. This consumer-oriented site for children and families of children with diabetes contains family-oriented material, and a section for kids that includes articles on diabetes camps and giving injections without pain. It also includes a unique section where professionals answer individual questions. The site also contains several excellent medical dictionaries — of interest to professionals.
http://www.niddk.nih.gov. This Web site of the National Institute for Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases contains ordering information for a vast number of free government publications and materials on specific aspects of diabetes management. It’s patient-oriented with a strong educational component that may be valuable to professionals.
http://www.joslin.harvard.edu. This user-friendly consumer-oriented Web site of the Joslin Dia-betes Center in Boston contains everything from research results to an extensive diabetes library to recipes and diabetes journals that can be printed out.
For professionals — CME courses are offered at these sites:
http://www.pslgroup.com/DIA BETES.htm. This professionally- oriented site has voluminous reports on clinical trials and research results, discussion groups and a unique Internet resource update notifier through e-mail.
Rick Mendosa, a journalist in Aptos, CA, who is a diabetic, writes a regular column recommending on-line resources for the American Diabetes Association Web site (http://www. diabetes. org), which he says is perhaps the most helpful Internet resource for professionals and for patients. He agrees with Ackerman’s recommendations on several of the above sites. Mendosa also has his own Web site, where he recommends dozens of other Web sites and posts some of his own writing on diabetes (http://www. mendosa. com/diabetes.htm). Ackerman also recommends Mendosa’s Web site.
http://www.diabetesdigest.com. This is an on-line version of the free patient-oriented magazine Diabetes Digest, distributed through pharmacies. It includes basic diabetes information for those just diagnosed.
http://www.aadenet.org. This is site of the American Association of Diabetes Educators, which includes a directory of the organization’s 10,000 members, on-line conferences, and legislative updates, including the Directory of Legisla-tion and Statutes For Coverage of Diabetes Self-Management Education by Health Insurance. This directory by state shows the status of mandated insurance coverage for diabetes education, equipment, and supplies.
http://www.aace.com. This is the Web site of the American Associ-ation of Clinical Endocrinologists, which contains guidelines for the management of diabetes.
http://www.ndei.org. The National Diabetes Education Initiative (NDEI) Web site for health care professionals is an on-line resource for medical education programs on Type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. The site’s features include "News Watch and Literature Alert," which provides information about the most recent diabetes research and news (updated every two weeks); "Sightings," which points out interesting features from other Web sites (updated every three weeks); "Diabetes Data," which features slides and lectures from the NDEI collection (updated every month); and "Events," which lists all NDEI-related and major international meetings (updated weekly).
Note: Consult only the sites from established medical facilities and organizations, as there is no regulatory body to oversee the information you find in cyberspace.
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