Physicians' Home Page Launches MedLink

Posted on July 8, 1997

Physicians' Home Page (PHP) has announced MedLINK, a new function that provides links to the full content of articles from over 200 prominent medical journals. MedLINK offers members of PHP the ability to access complete articles using the site's popular MEDLINE database. The search engine effectively indexes journal web sites and provides members with links to complete articles based on their interests.

This new functionality is a boon to physicians and the medical publishing marketplace alike. Access to the full text of articles online has long been a high-priority request from the medical community. However, two main issues have held it back: technology and commerce.

The world wide web itself solves the technology issue: PHP's implementation allows journal publishers to host and be responsible for the maintenance of their own content. The PHP MEDLINE database acts as a pointer, allowing physicians to search for and easily find the articles that are important to them.

To solve the commercial issue, PHP encourages direct contact between users and journal publishers. PHP does not intend to impose finder fees to the journals nor charge additional fees to its members. "It's a member benefit," explains Michael Grover, Product Manager of PHP. "We are here to create content and implement technology that benefits our members."

PHP is a membership-based web site that provides physicians with access to databases, online publications, a library of Internet resources, and online multimedia educational programs. With the help of an editorial board of prominent physicians, PHP's strategy is to focus on technology and content that add value to a physician's clinical and online experience.

MedLINK is one expression of this strategy. Other notable functions and achievements are:

--Digest Alerting: Physician-authored summaries of current medical journal articles keep members apprised of current topics; faxed to members

--Embedded Annotations: Medical librarian-authored links into related research are embedded into online publications;

--Favorite Searches: Members can save their favorite searches and replay them against current data sets; Basic membership to PHP is $19.95 per month for individual access. Group- and Enterprise-wide access plans are also available.