- Aetna

www.intelihealth.com

Aetna Intelihealth offers a site packed with links to almost any medical or health topic, with content reviewed in cooperation with Harvard Medical School. A special focus is on interactive tools. For anyone struggling with whether to have genetic testing or not, this site’s Genetic Testing box offers guidance and, for breast and ovarian cancer, an interactive decision tool. Other tools include Illustrations (for example, “A Look At Your Colon”), Assessments (“Depression Self-Assessment”) and general Tools (“Desk Exercises.”)

The site’s Ask The Expert feature welcomes emailed questions on general medicine, pharmacy and obstetrics/gynecology. There’s no guarantee of a personal answer, but questions of popular interest will be answered on the website by healthcare professionals affiliated with Harvard.

Clicking on some links will send you to a related, but separate, website that covers a subject area in depth. The website, Simple Steps to Better Dental Health, features articles about prevention, treatments and conditions of the teeth and gums. There’s also a link to Interactive Tools, Illustrations and Videos, which has moving illustrations on how to brush you teeth, and videos on how to detect head and neck cancer.

Another related link enables you to search the medical literature using Topicdoc.com, a free (registration required) search engine designed to make it easy for lay people to sort through the massive amount of information in medical journals.

Elsewhere there are links to Diseases & Conditions, Healthy Lifestyle, Your Health (specific links by age and gender) and Look It Up, which has a medical dictionary, an encyclopedia with one-page explanations (Health A to Z), a drug resource center, a directory of health related associations and a physician locator (listed under More). The Discussion Boards ask for registration to add new topics, but anyone can read the previous posts. You can choose among Women’s Health Issues, Healthy Lifestyle, Diseases & Conditions, Mind & Body and a Caregiving Support Group.

The site is rounded out with several news articles (often on work by Harvard researchers), a health poll (“If you’ve managed to quit smoking, what worked for you?”) and a place to sign up for free email newsletters.

Aetna, the insurance company, supports this website, which was started in 1996.

Last modified: 20 Sep 2006.