What is patientINFORM?

patientINFORM is a collaborative effort by trusted and experienced patient health organizations, medical societies, health information professionals, and scholarly and medical publishers. With the leadership of the American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association and American Heart Association, and the International Association of STM Publishers, other participants at the outset are the Welch Medical Library at The Johns Hopkins University, Association of American Publishers/Professional & Scholarly Publishers, and the following publishers: American Association for the Advancement of Science; American Association for Cancer Research; American Cancer Society; American Diabetes Association; American Heart Association; American Physiological Association; American Roentgen Ray Society; American Society of Hematology; Annals of Internal Medicine; Blackwell Publishing; BMJ Publishing Group Ltd; Elsevier; HighWire Press; Massachusetts Medical Society; Nature Publishing Group; Oxford University Press; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Society of Nuclear Medicine; Springer; Taylor and Francis; Thieme; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; Wolters Kluwer Health.

Together, these organizations will strive to better use the Internet to empower patients in making informed decisions about their health.

The voluntary health organizations' representatives are not medical-care providers.

patientINFORM's primary function is to educate and empower healthcare consumers with the latest research findings pertaining to certain diseases and ailments. All patients and caregivers are advised to consult their primary or specialist physicians to review the information they obtain from patientINFORM and discuss their treatment options.

Nor are the organizations a gateway to full access for all research articles that have ever been published. There are literally millions of published articles in the medical literature, and some have more impact than others. Participating voluntary health organizations will select articles from participating publishers that they feel are important and relevant to patients. They will develop content to explain these articles and provide links to them online. As the patientINFORM collaboration continues to expand, more and more articles will become available.