- Healthscout

www.healthscout.com

Tucked among the advertisements on HealthScout.com you’ll find webcasts of TV specials on health conditions, 3D medical animations, health videos, quizzes and interactive tools, and hundreds of news articles about common medical and health topics.

The site emphasizes the latest news of interest to consumers, such as drug safety alerts, improved testing procedures, consumer product recalls and new research findings regarding nutrition and health. You’ll also find a section of feature articles (accompanied by a particular advertising focus) such as articles on dry eye and Alzheimer’s disease. There’s also a section called FYI: Your Daily Health Tidbit, which offers very short, offbeat health tips, such as how to avoid electrical shock injuries.

Across the top of the home page, you’ll find a list of links that organize much of the site’s news articles. These include Women, Men, Kids, Seniors, Diseases, Addictions, Sex & Relationships, Diet/Fitness/Looks, Alternative Medicine and the Drug Checker, which is a direct link to the drug interactions page. The Today link provides a more extensive list of current news stories.

The Diseases link takes you to list of about 100 diseases and conditions; clicking on any of these links takes you to news articles related to the topic. For example, clicking on “Heat/Sunstroke” takes you to a page with two articles, one on how seniors should protect themselves from summer heat, and another on how car interiors heat up more rapidly than previously thought.

The Drug Information section on the site includes a Pill Identification Wizard. This enables you to describe a tablet or capsule by its color, shape and text and find out what the name of the drug is, if the drug is in the wizard’s limited database. The site also offers information on drug interactions and a drug library where you can research a relatively short list of medications by name.

The HealthScout Network is a provider and distributor of consumer health information and hosts the health sections for affiliates including Yahoo, iWon, USAToday.com, InfoSpace and NBC. It is owned and operated by Choice Media, Inc., of Arlington, Virginia.

Last modified: 20 Sep 2006.

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