This online publication shows the results of each health authority and hospital trust in England for a wide range of indicators. For each indicator you can see how your local NHS Trust compares with other hospitals throughout the country. For example, taking the indicator 'percentage of patients seen within 2 weeks of urgent GP referral for suspected breast cancer to outpatient appointment with specialist' one case see a medium acute Trust like the Royal Surrey Hospital meets this target 100% of the time, whereas Medway NHS Trust (a similar size Trust) only meets this target 27% of the time.

Cochrane Consumer Network
http://www.cochraneconsumer.com/

The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews http://www.update-software.com/cochrane/ is considered the gold standard of evidence-based research. The database, however, is produced primarily for the benefit of health professionals and as such the reviews are not written in a consumer-friendly way. To address this, the Cochrane Collaboration has produced a consumer version of this database that includes consumer summaries approved or written by the authors of the Cochrane reviews.

MMR vaccine - information sources

The recent debate about the safety of the MMR vaccine has no doubt encouraged many parents to turn to the Internet to seek further information. The Web site of the Department of Health http://www.doh.gov.uk/mmr.htm provides some useful background information, whilst the UK Health Promotion Unit http://www.immunisation.org.uk/vmmr.html provides much more detail, including clips from the video 'MMR - what parents want to know'.

The very latest research on this topic can also be found on the Web. The BMJ on the 16th February carried an article by Taylor et al that looked at whether the MMR vaccine is associated with bowel problems and developmental regression in children with autism http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7334/393 , whilst Molecular Pathology Online http://mp.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/54/6/DC1 includes an article by Uhlmann and Wakeffield (author of the paper that sparked the original debate).

Self-help groups
http://www.ukselfhelp.info/

The Patient's Internet Handbook gives details of over 100 UK support groups. If a condition you are interested in, however, is not covered in this section then the UK Self Help Group directory is worth looking at. This Web site provides the telephone numbers (and where available Web site addresses) of over 760 UK self help groups.

Google Toolbar
http://toolbar.google.com/

Although not related to health information on the Internet, I would recommend downloading the Google toolbar for anyone who does a lot of Web searching. Once installed, you can access Google any Web site location, without returning to the Google home page to begin another search. It also highlights your search terms as they appear on the page, and offers an immediate translation facility. Another winner from the Google team!


Robert Kiley - 20 February 2002