Evidence-Based Medicine on the Internet

Whatever the long-term outcomes of practising evidencebased medicine prove to he for the delivery of effective health care, there is little doubt of the impact it has had on the printing and publishing industries. For example, in the past 12 months the Medline database alone has indexed more than 300 articles on this topic. Over the same period, a search of Whitaker's Books in Print for titles that contain the words 'evidence based' identifies more than a dozen new books, whilst Ulrich's Periodicals Directory records the launch of five new journals on this theme. Fear of information overload is compounded by the results of an Internet search which highlights the existence of 5000+ evidence-based medicine Web sites. The purpose of this brief article is to highlight a few resources on the Internet that can help the busy health professional understand and practise evidence-based medicine.