EMedicine facts for kids
eMedicine is a huge online library of medical information. It was started in 1996 by doctors Scott Plantz and Jonathan Adler, along with computer experts Joanne and Jeffrey Berezin.
This website has about 6,800 articles on different medical topics. Each article is like a chapter in a special medical textbook. It also has over 25,000 pictures, videos, and other media files to help explain things.
Doctors who are experts in their field write these articles. Other doctors and even a pharmacist check the articles carefully to make sure they are correct. The articles are updated every year, or even more often if new medical information comes out. In January 2006, eMedicine was sold to a company called WebMD. Now, you can find its content as part of Medscape Reference.
How eMedicine Started
Scott Plantz, Jonathan Adler, and the Berezin family came up with the idea for eMedicine in 1996. They launched the first version of the website through a company called Boston Medical Publishing.
They created a special computer system called "Group Publishing System 1." This system allowed many doctors to work on articles at the same time. It was first used to create a large collection of information for emergency medicine. Over 600 doctors helped write more than 630 chapters in just over a year.
In 1997, eMedicine.com became its own separate company. It received money from investors in 1999 and 2000 to help it grow. Over several years, they created outlines for new topics and found expert doctors to write more than 6,100 additional medical and surgical articles. Most of the work was done from their office in Omaha, Nebraska.
In the early 2000s, eMedicine also worked with the University of Nebraska Medical Center. This partnership helped doctors, nurses, and pharmacists get special credits for continuing their education by reading eMedicine content.
In 2005, the company decided to sell eMedicine. The board of directors agreed to sell it to WebMD. The sale was completed in January 2006.
The website is free to use, but you need to sign up. You could also read eMedicine content as an e-book or download it to a palm top device.
StatPearls: A New Project
In 2018, some of the original founders of eMedicine started a new project called StatPearls. This is an international effort to improve medical education. Their goal is to create a free, complete online medical education database. They also want to help medical workers get affordable credits for continuing their education.
How Doctors Use eMedicine
Many studies have looked at how useful eMedicine is for medical professionals.
In 2012, a study by Volsky and others looked at the most popular health websites. They compared Wikipedia, eMedicine, and MedlinePlus. They found that eMedicine had the most accurate information, with 84% of its content matching medical textbooks. Wikipedia and MedlinePlus had lower accuracy. eMedicine also had fewer mistakes than Wikipedia. However, MedlinePlus was the easiest to read and use. The study concluded that eMedicine is very accurate and complete, but it might be a bit harder to read and navigate.
Other studies also show that doctors use eMedicine a lot:
- Laraway and Rogers used eMedicine as a main source for their research, along with PubMed and Medline.
- Cao, Liu, and Simpson used Medline and eMedicine to create an online system called AskHERMES. Doctors who used AskHERMES, Google, and UpToDate found AskHERMES helpful for solving complex medical problems.
- A 2009 study showed that over 60% of eye doctors (ophthalmologists) used eMedicine for online medical information.
- A 2007 study found that 12% of doctors in training for radiology used eMedicine first when doing research online.
- In 2005, a study ranked eMedicine as the second-best online source for information about brain and spine cancers in children. The National Cancer Institute website was ranked first.
- A 2002 study said that eMedicine's information on skin conditions (dermatology) was "excellent and comprehensive."
- In 2000, a doctor named AD Meyers announced that the ear, nose, and throat (ENT) textbook was available online at emedicine.com.
See also
In Spanish: EMedicine para niños
