Internet Cool Tools for Physicians

This is an excellent book for physicians to read and learn about all the possibilities on the Internet. The book is very well structured. It starts with some basics such as searching with Google. Google is very efficient for searching for specific medical information. Examples and searches are on medical topics, even the advanced search options in google are presented. After some information about Google Health, Google Scholar and iGoogle the focus of the book shifts towards PubMed, one of the most important search engines for physicians and other scientists. The most important PubMed tools from third parties are explained mostly those developed for medical purposes such as gopubmed.

The next level is retrieving information from searches and medical literature. RSS readers, e-mail alerts, Podcasting and Vodcasting are the next topics. Also organizing all this information is a topic. After explanation and a lot of suggestions appropriate for physicians of blogs and wikis the book focuses on social networking aimed at physicians (linkedIn, sermo, ozmosis), social bookmarking (delicious, connotea), and note keeping (diigo, google notebook, zotero). Webnotes wasn’t in the market when this book was conceived.

It is very well written and structured. It has a nice lay-out and design and could be of help to physicians trying to find their way on the Internet for their work and research. It is a lot of information in a small book, not to small, doesn’t fit in the pocket of a white coat. It should also be part of medical education, there is more than hyves, hotmail and other so much liked by the young ones.