Emily Horner, MLIS 
Assistant Librarian 
Raynor Memorial Libraries 
Marquette University 

This is an update of a review published in the September 2021 issue of Doody’s Collection Development Monthly. You can find the original review here. 

Medscape is an online portal geared toward physicians and health professionals. Its up-to-the-minute reporting on health research makes it a useful source of information for students and professionals hoping to keep up to date. Clinical guidelines and tools like a drug interaction checker extend its usefulness as a point-of-care resource. 

Content 

Medscape’s content includes medical news, editorials, drug information taken from FDA approval documentation, continuing education, conference highlights, and clinical guidelines provided by professional associations and governmental organizations such as the Department of Health and Human Services. Editorials bring a more personal, less clinical perspective to health information, from first-person narratives about unusual situations — like a patient bitten by an exotic pet snake — to discussions about the ethics of living limb donation. Membership is free and content is available in English, German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.  

The “Decision Point” section of Medscape, which provides short videos and clinical guidelines for a broad range of medical concerns, has been expanded to include 12 specialties, including infectious diseases and nephrology. Each video is narrated by a subject specialist and accompanied by a transcript.  

The portal homepage now includes a “Trending on Medscape” section for popular news articles, and an infographics section pulled from Business of Medicine reports covering topics such as doctor burnout and residency stress. 

The video section has been expanded with “MDAngle” content, short videos in which physicians share news about evolving treatment guidelines as well as personal experiences, such as one where an oncologist reflects on a case early in his career treating a young man with kidney cancer. 

Features and Functionality 

Medscape includes a basic search function. Search results can be refined by date, specialty, and content type. Although search results can be refined by date (“Any time,” “Past day,” “Past week,” “Past month,” or “Past year”), a custom date search option would help users locate content from the past. 

Figure 1: Medscape search results page and content types (Source: Medscape.com) 

Website navigation remains generally straightforward, although the home page is visually busy, occasionally making it difficult for users to efficiently find content. An app is now available for both Android and iOS users.  

Business Model & Breakthrough 

Medscape continues to be a valuable source of news, information, and opinion-based content on a wide range of health topics. Librarians and other information professionals may find this resource most useful to quickly stay up to date on new developments and advances in the health sciences. Additionally, because of this resource’s value in providing free point-of-care tools for health professionals who may be working in under-resourced environments, it would be well worth including in health sciences course guides.