Michael Bonert's
University of Toronto Meds Page

Online Health Resources - Mostly Directed at Patients

• Medlineplus.org - National Institutes of Health (US Government). The best IMHO.
• National Health Service (NHS) - UK Government.
• Familydoctor.org - American Academy of Family Physicians. The search by symptom charts are really nice. They are a good way to match what you know (the symptoms) to what you don't know (the medical conditions that may cause them).
• Canadian Health Network - Health Canada - Federal Government
• College of Family Physicians of Canada - The family doc knows best.
• Healthy Ontario - Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

Meds/Premeds Corner

• Stedman's Medical Dictionary - An excellent medical dictionary.
• Online Medical Dictionary - Another online medical dictionary.
• eMedicine.com - My favourite peer-reviewed site. Excellent information... but reg' required. Articles can usually be found with google (e.g. a google search with "stroke, emedicine" will find you the links to eMedicine - Stroke, Ischemic and eMedicine - Stroke, Hemorrhagic).
• Wikipedia - An internet community encyclopedia. Very simple language. Can have a surprising amount of detail about things medical. Can be addictive. Requires critical reading skills.
• Merck Manual - Good for the basics.
• Family Practice Notebook - Not perfect... but I like it.
• NHS Guidelines Finder - A collection of guidelines. I like 'cause it gives one the differential diagnoses, prevalence and a slew of reference material. Good for general stuff and avoiding headaches.
• Harrison's Internal Medicine Online - Excellent. Accessible from U of T / via myaccess.
• Medical Mnemonics - A nice database of mnemonics.
• Blue Histology - An good site from the University of Western Australia.
• Heart Failure - Diary of a Third Year Medical Student - A US med student's diary. Interesting stuff.
• University of Toronto Medical Journal - I was webmaster there a while back.
• The Virtual Autopsy - An interesting site. Try to make the Dx.
• Rxlist.com - Drug info. Uses medical language.
• Drugs.com - Drug info. Directed at patients.
• MSAT - If you've taken the MCAT. Medical Specialty Aptitude Test. Nice.
• Pathway Evaluation Program for Medical Professionals - Same idea as the MSAT.
• Canadian Premed & Med School Forums - Ian Wong's wonderful premed/med forum.
• Student Doctor Network - US equivalent of Ian's site.

The Lighter Side

• Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division - Blows the cover on the dihydrogen monoxide conspiracy.
• D'oh! An analysis of the medical care provided to the family of Homer J. Simpson - Why Dr Nick is better than Dr Hibbert.
• Head injuries in nursery rhymes: evidence of a dangerous subtext in children's literature - Writing better nursery rhymes.
• Acquired growth hormone deficiency and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in a subject with repeated head trauma, or Tintin goes to the neurologist - A theory that explains Tintin's delayed pubertal development.

Free eMedicine

• Medical software's free future - A BMJ editorial by Douglas Carnall. The title pretty much says it.
• Gnumed - The official FSF eMedicine program. Some contribs to the UI.
• OSCAR McMaster - Nice home grown eMedicine. Made a few small suggestions they implemented. The project leader is a U of T Meds grad.
• Res Medicinae - A German eMedicine effort. Home of the original Dr Tux.
• Tk Family Practice - Free EMR software written mostly in Tcl/Tk.

Free Software :-)

• TheOpenCD - A nice collection of free software. Easy to install. If you managed to find the 'on' switch on the computer you can probably install it. Includes OpenOffice.org, The Gimp, Mozilla & more.
• OpenOffice.org - Essentially Microsoft Office for free, without breaking the law. Creates PDF files. Available on OS-X, Windows & Linux.
• Firefox - The superior web browser. You gotta love the pop-up ad blocking feature. Get the adblock plugin, to get rid of flash based ads, and user agent switcher, for the the pesky sites that insist your browser tells 'em it is Internet Explorer.
• The Gimp - An awesome drawing program. It is in the same class as Photoshop but free! Available on Windows & Linux. Used to edit Dr Tux (see below) & the picture of my stethoscope (background), create Gnumed's serpent Monty and much better stuff beyond my capabilities. Here is some stuff from my camera.
• Nvu.com - An HTML editor for the non-programmer, similar to FrontPage.
• Free Flash Card - A little program that I wrote. Some old screenshots are here. The source is here.

Why free software?

• Eric Raymond explains why and how in his book The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
• The competitor (Microsoft) explains here and notes it can't compete, unless it keeps users ignorant, abuses patent law and saturates the airwaves with FUD.
• The Right to Read is a story about how the future might look if free software were to be made illegal.
• Here Eben Moglen provides another perspective and makes some bold predictions about proprietary software.
• My thoughts on free software can be found in my provost submission and an article in the UTMJ.

GNU/Linux - Free Operating Systems

• Debian GNU/Linux - The superior OS for experienced Linuxheads. Not recommend for newbies. My laptop install notes are here. A page that has notes about setting-up wireless networking is here.
• Mandriva - If you're sick of using a monopolist's inferior operating system and want to switch to Linux. Mandrake 9.0 was my first Linux distribution.
• Knoppix - Linux from a CD - great if you want to give it a try.

Dr Tux

Health Policy / Politics

• The Student Medical Reform Group - A U of T group committed to medical reform, that's associated the MRG.
• SmartRisk - It is time to think about accidents injuries differently.
• Bartcop.com - A humourous look at US politics.
• Mixed Member Proportional for Canada - My views on the electoral reform.
• The high costs of for-profit care - Two Harvard people discuss US for-profit health care.
• Excess in the pharmaceutical industry - The side of big pharma you don't see in their ads.
• For-profit hospitals are more expensive than non-for-profit ones - Essential reading if one thinks private hospitals are a way to save money.
• For-profit hospitals have higher mortality rates than non-for-profit ones - Essential reading if one thinks for-profit hospitals give one a higher quality of care.

Dictionaries

• Eurodicautom - An excellent multilingual dictionary that covers, among others, medical terms and technical terms.
• German <-> English Dictionary - A simple dictionary from the TU Chemnitz. Contains over 179,000 entries.
• Another German <-> English Dictionary - A dictionary from the TU München.
• Babel Fish Translation - An electronic translator - named after the translating fictional animal in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Coming soon or whenever I have time again...

• More pictures/art to keep Dr Tux company.
• Stuff about my publications & my research.
• A table of contents... so it is easier to navigate the page.

Sunset on Lake Superior