Drugs.com Relaunches With Database of -- You Guessed It! -- Drugs

Drugs.com has announced that they've relaunched as a searchable database of over 24,000 prescription and OTC drug descriptions.

The front page has a variety of information -- news, a category list, poll, etc -- and it's easy to miss the small query box at the top of the page as well as the browse-by-first-letter links also at the top of the page.

For searching, you can search by drug name, condition, or "on the Internet" which looks like a plain Web search powered by.. Overture. Yuck. (I'm not yucking at Overture, I'm more yucking this: a Web site whose overwhelming concern SHOULD BE credibility is listing results from a PPC search engine. I just think it's weird, all right?) Anyway, do a search for the condition anthrax and you'll find -- no results. Hmm. (To be fair, they had a story about anthrax-treating antibiotics on the front page.) How about headache? Ah, over 700 results.

In the headache search conditions came first (tension headache, cluster headache, etc.) and were followed by drug listings. For conditions you get a "care guide," which provides information on causes, signs and symptoms, and care. The drug listings include most important facts up front, what it is, under what conditions you shouldn't take it, possible side effects, etc. Very thorough. I didn't like the small text size, though.

Lots of information here, easily searched, care guides are in plain English, but the font size could be a little larger and the Overture listings make me uncomfortable. Worth a look.

Posted to Science-Medicine-Drugs