PubMed Health

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is developing a new site called PubMed Health.  According to MidContinental Region News, “PubMedHealth will focus on consumer-level, evidence-based health information.”  PubMed Health is under development at the National Library of Medicine’s National Center for Biotechnology  Information and  is being introduced in phases, starting with consumer drug information provided by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.  According to the Sheridan Libraries blog post, “The drug information will be integrated with several other NCBI databases, ultimately providing a linked resource for finding information about diseases and conditions, treatments, and other related data.”

I know what you are thinking, “What does this mean for MedlinePlus?”  Personally, I have no clue.  But according to the MidContinental Region News, “PubMed Health does not replace MedlinePlus (http://medlineplus.gov/), NLM’s premier health Web site for patients and their families and friends. ”

Ok so MedlinePlus isn’t going away, that still doesn’t answer a lot of other questions, like how will PubMed Health integrate with other NCBI resources?  I have been looking for more information on PubMed Health but there just isn’t a lot out there on it.  Apparently, an NLM Technical Bulletin article about PubMed Health will be published once the site is ready to be launched.  (I think it would be nice if they were a little more proactive and write something up sooner rather than when the site is ready for launch because a quick search on some drugs in Google is already yielding some PubMed Health results, like progesterone, amlodipine, and methadone.)

I just worry about possible confusion with this new resource.  If it is for consumers then calling it something very similar to an already established consumer database is going to be confusing IMHO.  I will post more about PubMed Health when I learn more and if anybody has any information on it that they would like to share, please comment.