Stop Searching . . . Start Finding

Dear Doctor:

From the moment I joined Consultant 28 years ago, my colleagues and I have been constantly refining the journal to meet your changing practice needs. To a publication devoted mainly to authoritative reviews, we have added shorter articles, photo-rich features, and self-quiz case studies to help you cope with the faster pace of medical practice. And 6 years ago, we brought Consultant into the electronic age by launching www.ConsultantLive.com to facilitate your retrieval of the practical articles and to make our thousands of photographs of clinical conditions available to aid in diagnosis and management.

For the past year, we have been working to develop an Internet search engine for practicing clinicians (rather than consumers or researchers) that would be more selective than Google but more comprehensive than PubMed/Medline. Thanks to the guidance and enthusiasm of Drs Robert Rakel, Greg Rutecki, Kay Cynamon, Ed Shahady, and Warren Heffron, we are pleased to bring you SearchMedica Primary Care, the next generation of medical search engines, running now at http://www.searchmedica.com.

What makes SearchMedica better?

• It uses only sources that are pre-screened by primary care experts and the editors of Consultant. No unfiltered consumer Web sites of dubious validity. Only professional-quality information.
• It includes practical journals and other sources of useful information that you use daily, rather than just the research literature. And it presents as few rat, mouse, guinea pig, and other experimental studies as possible to emphasize findings that you can use immediately in patient care.
• What really differentiates SearchMedica from Google and PubMed, however, is that it allows you to view your search results broken down into "Categories" of information that our physician advisors have identified as being most important to primary care clinicians. No more wading through computer screen after screen, trying to read through a confusing mixture of review articles, case reports, guidelines, etc.

How can you access the power of SearchMedica's Categories?

Just type a question into the query box and click Enter. If the initial search results displayed in the center column seem to be the topic you're after, look over to the gray boxes at the left of your computer screen.

Are you most interested in Practical Articles & News? Then click on the top Category button and the search results will change to display only that subset of your search results. Do you want to see what key opinion leaders have to say about your query? Then choose the Research Reviews and Editorials Category button.

Interested in Evidence-Based Medicine? Select the EBM and Meta-Analysis button. Want to earn CME credit while also filling in a gap in your knowledge base? Choose the Continuing Medical Education button.

We are also working on 3 other categories for your possible use during patient visits: (1) Clinical Trials for Patients for possible referral, (2) Alternative-Complementary Medicine so that you can talk authoritatively about dietary supplements and other "alternative" medicinals your patients are taking that may interfere with the therapeutics you are prescribing, and coming soon, (3) Patient Education Materials such as brochures and other information that you can print out and give to them.

SearchMedica in general and these Categories in particular have been created to save you precious time and help you improve patient care. We will continually be adding additional content and trying to improve this service. Please give us your feedback and register as a SearchMedica member so we can pass along updates. You can also enter drawings for free gifts such as video iPods.

So Stop Searching and Start Finding.

Thank you,

Stephen K. Murata
Editorial Director