Jon WilcoxWednesday 10 August 2005, 9:37AM

www.InCirculation.net.

One of the more exciting aspects to the phenomenon of one-stop-shop medical resource websites is the commercially driven and somewhat competitive quest for having the "best" sponsored sites.

A site well worth looking at is Astra Zeneca's InCirculation.net. Another excellent site, already looked at in New Zealand Doctor is MerckMedicus (sponsored by Merck).

InCirculation.net is a comprehensive cardiovascular resource for primary and secondary level clinicians (and for researchers) which is updated each week.

It has a fully independent and highly regarded international advisory board of 14 cardiologists - and in this respect the sponsors appear to have little or no editorial involvement. The chief advisor is Desmond Julian - said to be the "father" of coronary care units, having set the first one up in Sydney in 1962.

Antipodean clinicians who may at times feel some distance away from the heart of Western medicine can take heart in the fact that this philanthropically globalist pharmaceutical sponsor advertises the site as being "intended for an international audience".

All of this content is accessible painlessly via a regular "publication headlines of the week" emailed link - which is optional for those who might already have a problem managing their Inbox content.

One can take the on-line "tour" of the website, which gives a thumbnail summary of the essential content, and includes: Cardiovascular news.

This provides regular and timely news updates covering cardiology research, clinical trials, practice guidelines, cardiovascular treatment advances, healthcare initiatives etc.

The section is comprehensively written using reputable peer- reviewed primary sources and using a specified team of medical journalists. Guidance is provided by the advisory board to ensure the information is practicable and relevant for current clinical practice.

Papers are summarised comprehensively (rather than abstracted) which provides an ideal and highly readable resource for busy GPs. This section can also be accessed through each of the clinical sub-sections (listed at the top of the home page) if preferred: Coronary Heart Disease; Arrhythmias; Diabetes; Lipidology; Heart Failure; Hypertension and Stroke.

The state-of-the-art updates are clearly impressive and each clinical sub-topic is separately indexed and can have a number of daily news items - generally from important medical publications - with full and comprehensive summaries provided.

Congress reports

Daily reports and cardiology news are provided direct from the major international cardiology and cardiovascular-related congresses. Clinical reporters provide important news coverage, in- depth analysis and review and may even include audio interviews with key speakers.

Editorials and key opinions

Editorials and key opinions come from the editorial advisory board and make observational commentary and interpretation of important new aspects of clinical care in cardiology.

I feel the best value for primary care is in this section. Issues covered may include the impact of clinical trial results, new guidelines, drug developments and novel therapies, to the latest findings on the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease.

International cardiology experts are asked here to share their views on the issues they feel are important to current and future clinical practice. Much of this content has a strong relationship to primary care management, and is an extremely helpful way for us to keep up with relative value in knowing what "we need to know" without being swamped.

Clinical guidelines

This section brings together a comprehensive collection of international clinical guidelines and provides links to a number of original documents produced by prominent professional groups right across the international cardiovascular arena.

'What's What' clinical trial overviews

The "What's What" guide to clinical cardiology abbreviations and cardiovascular acronyms is available online. Wild card search engines help the reader to track down partly forgotten or unknown trials.

Classic trials in Cardiology

Power point slide summaries have been selected and compiled by the advisory board from the "What's What" reference guide as those having had a significant impact on clinical practice. Slides can be downloaded for personal use in lectures and presentations though this perhaps is less of a "must have" feature for the GP audience.

Trials featured include such famous acronymical cardiovascular foundations as AIRE, HOPE, LIPID, WOSCOPS - and of course a good number of others.

Miscellaneous

There are also miscellaneous features including an enhanced and dedicated PubMed interface (utilising the huge NIH medical database resource), "Clinical Challenges" for CME activities, further clinician and patient resource links and tools such as clinical calculators.

Question the experts

A "Question the Experts" section where registrants are invited to submit questions to our experts on any chosen topic. Previous questions and answers can be reviewed using the search engine.

Answers to questions are posted on the site and archived over time, creating an additional source of information for further reference.

Image bank

An "Image Bank" is also provided by a separate company called Current Medical Group Ltd. This includes a huge resource of high quality graphs, tables and illustrations.

These are categorised into five sub-topics, such as Heart Failure: Cardiac Function and Dysfunction which in this case is then further indexed into 15 sections from the Molecular and Cellular Basis of Contraction and Relaxation through to Cardiac Transplantation and Diastolic Dysfunction.

The other four sub-topics include Hypertension, Chronic Ischaemic Heart Disease, Acute Infarction and other ischaemic syndromes, and Atherosclerosis.

The InCirculation.net has a distinct emphasis on primary care medicine; all summaries are very readable and appear to be well selected.

Keeping up to date with modern cardiology and with the best choice of medical therapies for our increasingly ageing and outpatient clinic deprived patient populations is challenging indeed.

This website should go a long way towards helping us and our patients to stay on track.