Media Doctor does not provide medical advice, and does not assess the quality of the evidence on which the stories are based. Instead, we concentrate on the articles themselves. For more information on the treatments featured on this site, please try the following links.

• Australian Prescriber

  http://www.australianprescriber.com/

  A reliable and non-commercial source of information on drug treatments

• Informed Health On-line

  http://www.informedhealthonline.org//item.aspx?tabid=25

  An important source of information on medical treatments, based on reviews performed by the Cochrane Collaboration and written for consumers

• Bandolier

  http://www.jr2.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/

  An excellent site that reviews the evidence for health care interventions

• Australian Medicare Services Advisory Committee Reports of New Technologies

  http://www.msac.gov.au/reports.htm

  Site which stores reviews of new medical technologies performed by the Australian Medicare Services Advisory Committee prior to their consideration of listing as medical benefits

• Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee - recommendations to list new drugs

  http://www.health.gov.au/pbs/healthpro/outcomes_full.htm#recent

  Outcomes of PBAC considerations of requests to list drugs on the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Schedule (the list of drugs subsidised by the Federal Government)

• Behind the Medical Headlines

  http://www.behindthemedicalheadlines.com/

  A site that is maintained by the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons in Edinburgh, Scotland. This site provides detailed commentaries on the facts lying behind medical headlines in the international press.

• Cochrane Library

  http://www.cochrane.org

  This is the most authoritative compilation of evidence in the World. It is designed mainly for health professionals. Read the newcomer's guide if it is your first visit. Put in the search term of interest under 'reviews' and you will access the abstracts of all relevant reviews completed by the Cochrane Collaboration.

• Tipsheet-For Reporting on Drugs, Devices and Medical Technologies

  http://www.cmwf.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=239323

  "Some simple questions to consider and discuss." This tip sheet, developed by Ray Moynihan for the Commonwealth Fund, provides a selection of questions which may assist reporters in choosing directions in their research. It is widely used and recommended by health reporters.

• Statement of Principles Association of Health Care Journalists

  http://www.ahcj.umn.edu/files/AHCJ_principles.pdf

  This is a very comprehensive guide to the responsibilities of health care journalists

• Therapeutics Initiative/ Therapeutics Letter

  http://www.ti.ubc.ca/pages/letter.html

  This is a regular newsletter with evidence-based reviews of therapeutic topics. The group that publish the newsletter are fiercely independent, but match this with considerable knowledge and skill in the areas of clinical practice and drug therapies.

• Medical Journal of Australia

  http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/183_04_150805/contents_150805.html

  Monitoring the quality of medical news reporting: early experience with media doctor

• Media Doctor Canada

  http://www.mediadoctor.ca

  With the help of various academics and clinicians from University of British Columbia, York University and the University of Victoria, the Media Doctor Canada site is a partner website to Media Doctor Australia, and covers the media outlets in Canada

• Scottish Medicines Consortium

  http://www.scottishmedicines.org.uk

  Their name may suggest to you that they manufacture drugs, but don't be deceived. The consortium carries out some very detailed and quite hard hitting evaluations of new drugs in Scotland. The evaluations are first class and can be downloaded in full.

• Health News Review

  http://www.healthnewsreview.org/

  A new site that has just commenced an ambitious program of assessing and reporting the quality of health news stories in the media in the USA. This site uses very similar methods to Media doctor Australia and Media doctor Canada and we regard it as a sister site.

• 7 Words (and more) You Shouldn't Use in Medical News

  http://www.healthnewsreview.org/ThingsYouShouldKnow/The7words.php

  A lovely piece on how certain words used in medical news stories can mislead and sometimes even offend

• Behind the Headlones

  http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx

  A UK site that examines the research on which health stories are based.

• Media Doctor Hong Kong

  http://www.mediadoctor.hk

  The Media Doctor Hong Kong website was started in 2008 by a team from the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong. Much like the original Media Doctor project, their aim is to promote excellence in health and medical news reporting.