(New York) – Thousands of people from around the area put on their running
shoes to take part in the Revlon Run/Walk to help raise millions of dollars
for women’s cancers. One of the sponsors that had a big presence at the
event was an online cancer website called Oncology.com, one of many Web
sites dedicated to cancer information.
The Internet has become the largest information resource that spans all time
zones and continents. While e-commerce has become big business, consumers of
medical information have also been flooding the World Wide Web.
Meg Walsh, the CEO and president of Oncology.com, wanted to build a site
aimed at patients and health care professionals.
“We need to be both a destination of nominal information, proprietary and
original news, breaking news everyday as well as a gateway to all the great
sites like all of the nonprofits that we work with,” said Walsh.
Oncology.com partners with the American Cancer Society, which delivers
information about cancer statistics as well as the latest in treatment. The
National Cancer Institute is a governmental site backed by the
well-researched and well-funded National Institutes of Health. Consumers can
go directly to these individual sites or link to them from Oncology.com.
With more than 20,000 medical Web sites on the Internet, one of the biggest
tasks for any site is to prove their credibility. That is at the core of the
mission at Oncology.com. They want physicians, other healthcare
professionals and their patients to believe what they read.
“Well, we make sure that all of our content is written by people who have
come from the industry — both healthcare professionals as well as medical
writers and then all of our material is vetted out, checked by oncologists,”
said Walsh.
The relaunching of Oncology.com later this month will give Internet users
different entry points, depending on their need. There will be special
sections geared toward newly diagnosed patients, those who are already
living cancer, doctors, nurses and other allied professionals.
An important point of information for many cancer patients and their
families is locating clinical trials and discovering whether they are still
open for enrollment.
Taking her own advice to heart, Walsh became a consumer herself when cancer
struck her family.
“My father was diagnosed with prostate cancer within the last year, and it
became of course just like everyone else who is faced with this issue — a
very critical need,” said Walsh.
Although the Internet contains plenty of important information, it is a
largely unregulated domain. Information that is read or downloaded from the
‘Net should be confirmed with a physician or other certified professional
organization. (Dr. Smith).
