This month we are looking at Internet resources for health law research. Enormous amounts of information reside on the web regarding this topic. I will focus on a few good government web sites, plus the best health law portals that link to other resources. I am including a couple of sites that are ugly duckings, but they do contain some information not available elsewhere.

United States Department of Health and Human Services, http://www.hhs.gov/
Start here and look particularly at the links under Reference Collections and under Policies and Regulations. The Reference Collection includes links to dictionaries, indices, statistics, databases, and more. The Policies and Regulations include laws and regulations dealing with health related topics, plus policies and guidance documents from divisions within Health and Human Services.

Healthfinder, http://www.healthfinder.gov
This site is intended for the public, but includes links to numerous good resources, including databases, dictionaries, medical journals, and public health related libraries.

National Institutes of Health, http://www.nih.gov/
Click on Health Information for a guide to resources. Access the web version of GratefulMed, which searches journals, clinical trials, drug facts and more at http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/gw/Cmd

National Library of Medicine, http://www.nlm.nih.gov/
This is a direct link to the health information available through the PubMed database. PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine, includes over 14 million citations for biomedical articles as far back as the 1950's. These citations are from MEDLINE and additional life science journals. PubMed includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources. In addition, this site includes links to library services.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, http://www.ahrq.gov/
This agency produces a range of publications and electronic information products that are available to users through different channels and a variety of formats. Many publications are available free on a single-copy basis. Other products are available for sale through either the Government Printing Office or the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). The user can search for applicable documents in their electronic catalog.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov/
This is “the lead federal agency for protecting the health and safety of people,” and has many publications, data and statistical sources available on its site.

American Health Lawyers Association, http://www.healthlawyers.org
This association web site includes information about the area of law and a good portal that takes the user to many sites of interest. Click on Health Law Web Sites in the left-hand frame to access these sites.

Saint Louis University School of Law Center for Health Care Studies, http://law.slu.edu/healthlaw/research/links/index.html
This is a particularly good source of links for information on health care law. Organized by topics within health care, it includes links to agencies and institutions dealing with health care, HIPAA and health privacy, journals and publications, portals, indices, and search engines.

Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute, http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/health.html
This web site contains a guide to health law, with links to resources worldwide, including the World Health Organization at http://www.who.int/en/.

'Lectric Law Library article on Medical Malpractice, http://www.lectlaw.com/tmed.html
This guide claims that it is practical information about medical malpractice, litigation, standard of care, using expert medical consultants & witnesses, and other Med/Law issues. I recommend this with the caveat that it has not been updated for a couple of years, but does contain basic encyclopedia style information.

Findlaw, Health Law, http://www.findlaw.com/01topics/19health/index.html
This site includes sponsored links and articles, plus other advertisements, but also has a good list of resources, including links to the American Medical Association, law firms practicing in the various health law specialties, and much more. Its list of resources is one of the largest, but some of the links are no longer active.

Health Hippo, http://hippo.findlaw.com/
Health Hippo is a collection of policy and regulatory materials related to health care, with some graphics sprinkled in. It is truly ugly! This site is located within the Findlaw web site, but they do not maintain it. That quickly becomes obvious to the user, as the web site is not well organized. It does contain some very good resources, so it is included here as a starting point despite its limitations.

Here is one last web site directed specifically to non-medical librarians. Although ostensibly for librarians, it has great starting places for anyone who needs to do medical research in conjunction with a health law question. It is maintained by a librarian from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. It is called Medical Reference for Non-Medical Librarians, http://denison.uchsc.edu/outreach/medbib3.htm#.docdel