The amount of medical information available on the Internet is mindboggling, if not mind-numbing. And what do you find once you wade into these cyberwaters is often so contradictory, confusing, or suspect that it is easy to feel more addled than assisted by the plethora of articles, advertising, and medical reports. Dr. Ian Smith's Guide to Medical Websites bring order to this chaos. As medical correspondent on NBC's Today show and a regular columnist for Time, Dr. Smith hears from many people with medical questions. In addition to personally addressing their concerns, he constantly researches medical websites that provide further explanation. This guide reflects Dr. Smith's selections of the top general medical sites as well as the best sites in every medical specialty. Each site listing includes a short summary and ratings that take into account, among other things:

-links and navigability
-sources of content
-interactivity
-frequency of site updates

Now you no longer have to become an Internet search expert to find the information you need in caring for your health and that of those you love.

Dr. Ian Smith is a medical correspondent for NBC's Today show and WNBC-TV in New York City. He also writes a weekly health column for the New York Daily News and is a contributing columnist for Time magazine. Dr. Smith graduated from Harvard University and received a master's in science education from Columbia University. He attended Dartmouth Medical School and completed the last two years of his medical education at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. Prior to becoming a medical correspondent, Dr. Smith was surgical intern in orthopedics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Hospitals. He lives in Manhattan.