In my diabetic Internet travels, I have learned that there are an incredible number of medical Web logs out there. It seems the medical community was one of the first to catch on to the power of blogs. A few of these medical blogs have been around since 1999 (the blog Stone Age, mind you!), and with today’s plethora, they now even have their own weekly roundup of the best stuff offered, called the Grand Rounds — hosted at a different med blog each Tuesday -– along with their very own annual honors, the “Medical Blog Awards.”

Some of the content is pure YUCK from a laymen’s perspective. (Did I mention I can’t stand blood, or beeping equipment, or the smell of disinfectants? So how did I land HERE in NEEDLEVILLE? But I digress…)

Apparently lots of the med blogs have, for a long time, offered very useful information about how people are diagnosed, treated and sometimes cured to health professionals and the curious. They are written by family doctors, ER doctors, psychiatrists, nurses, medical students -– the whole gamut of med characters. I haven’t yet found any endocrinologists who blog; now that would be an interesting read!

Anyway, I have created my own little roundup by starting a special blogroll area for “The Med Blogs” (the ones I find most accessible) in the right-hand column here. I can’t say I read many of them regularly, but it’s good to know the professionals are on board.

Winner of the 2004 Best Medical Weblog, by the way, was the “Grunt Doc.” And “Best New Medical Weblog” for 2004 went to “The Cancer Blog,” the separated Siamese twin of “The Diabetes Blog,” also written by our very own Paul Chaney of Radiant Marketing for Weblogs, Inc. I do declare! Congratulations!

Now if we could just get a movement started for PATIENT BLOGS, ay? You’d vote for me, now wouldn’t you?

Wednesday, April 27th, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4)