Health Sciences Online (HSO) has launched claiming to be a ‘virtual learning center’ which aims to deliver authoritative, comprehensive, free, and ad-free health sciences knowledge using the search technology of Vivisimo. HSO (www.hso.info) is a portal with browse and search functions with access to a comprehensive collection of top-quality courses and references in medicine, public health, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, basic sciences, and other health sciences disciplines.
The user is able to search any health sciences topic from over 50,000 courses, references, guidelines, and other learning resources. Source material is selected from accredited educational sources including universities, governments, and professional societies. These resources are hand-selected from already-existing reliable sources and resource collections by clinicians and other experts from medical specialty societies, accredited continuing education organizations, governments, and universities such as Cambridge, Columbia, Harvard, Hopkins, McGill, MIT, Penn, Stanford, and Yale.
The information is delivered by powerful search technology from Vivisimo which allows users to easily see comprehensive search results and quickly find the answers they need. I really like the intuitive graphic interface for browsing and refining search; the Google Translator integration (covering 22 languages) and the ‘preview’ section in the search results. The preview tool allows the user to review the source site and associated information from withtin the results page.
Has this changed the face of health information provision forever? Certainly it is one of the most altruistic and honorable health service resources on the planet and will enhance information provision to a huge number of health care professionals worldwide. It appears to have succeeded in addressing the need for accessible, selective and current online educational/training resources to promote appropriate care and policies. Read this great review from AltSearchEngines.
HSO is an incredible resource for health professionals all over the world. Open access to health information should literally save millions of lives and lead to important new discoveries - Anne Margulies [Executive Director of Open Course Ware - MIT].
HSO has succeeded where other initiatives have not, because our vision of a democratization of health sciences knowledge has tremendous appeal to a wide variety of supporters. This ranges from an endocrinologist who donated $50,000 because “HSO will change the world”, to an Armenian specialist in preventive medicine who volunteered more than 1,000 hours because “HSO will finally make top-quality information available to all the world’s doctors”, to Senator Sam Nunn’s Global Health and Security Initiative stating that, “HSO has abundant high quality resources, so it’s not like putting in keywords in a normal search engine – this will create revolutions in health education, disease surveillance, and telemedicine.”
HSO’s next phase will be developing programs using the gathered materials to help train and educate public and clinical health providers around the world.
Thanks so much for alerting us all to this important development. Very admirable people engaged in inspiring work.
Life in the Fast Lane » Blog Archive » Top 8 Bedside Health Search Engines 2008 // Dec 30, 2008 at 4:42 pm
[...] Health Sciences Online [...]
Appreciate your review of Health Sciences Online - thanks! As the search provider for HSO (Vivisimo), it’s been a distinctive pleasure to help Erica Frank and her staff realize their vision for making authoritative medical information freely available to the world’s health practitioners and look forward to helping HSO continue to develop their information portal.
Search functions with access to a comprehensive collection of top-quality courses and references in medicine, public health, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, basic sciences, and other health sciences disciplines.