Biomedical RSS News

Medical news is not at the top of most journalists’ priority lists when it comes to headlines that sell. In some cases, one may see the next "cancer cure" announced as a quick blurb and a mangled summary of a medical study on the front page, but some may argue that this is not the proper way to provide news about the medical field. For those that find themselves with either too much or too little information, medical RSS feeds may be a comfortable middle ground between the newspaper and the tangled wilds of the Internet. With this in mind, here are a few websites that offer succinct, accurate information on breaking news in medical science.

For the Layperson

• Reuters Health New s (https://www.reuters.com/news/health) aggregates news stories from all over the world. Its main draw is in the volume of articles that the staff is able to supply, though Health News’s RSS feed is not sorted into subcategories. For sheer volume of health news, Reuters may be the right choice.



• From the owners and operators of WebMD, MedicineNet.com is a comprehensive medical encyclopedia with dozens of RSS feeds sorted into subcategories for individuals looking for news related to their ailment or area of study. From asthma to depression to pregnancy, this site has a separate feed for most issues with a regular news flow. MedicineNet.com’s articles are concise and reliable.



• BBC Health News (bbc.co.uk/news/health/) is the health section of the BBC’s news website. The BBC is a public television channel in the UK that is similar to America’s NPR. It is widely considered to be low on corporate bias and reliable on the facts of its stories. The RSS feed for Health News is not sorted into subcategories, so it is mostly intended to be used for general headlines or users with filtered or keyword-based RSS software.

For the Medical Professional

• Medpage (medpagetoday.com) is a Pennsylvania-based news site for medical practitioners. Much like MedicineNet, Medpage’s RSS feeds are diverse and grouped into subcategories in their various medical fields. The volume of articles is not high, however. A given RSS feed may receive as few as one article per week.



• Onmedica.com is a UK-based medical news service that provides articles from professional freelance journalists. Since these articles can include promotional materials for prescription drugs which are illegal to provide to medical nonprofessionals in the UK, registration is required along with proof of medical professional status to access the articles and RSS feed. Registered medical professionals can expect to receive a wealth of information for their trouble, however. Onmedica.com includes a steady volume of articles and well-crafted coursework for a continuing medical education.

There are many more RSS feeds available in the health sector, including Medline Plus, Healthline, and New Scientist magazine. The sites above represent only a diverse sample of the wealth of information available online. For the diligent Internet crawler, there may be other feeds more suited to one’s individual needs. For others, however, these sites should provide a good start to keeping on top of the many developments in the health industry.

Photo Credit: NWABR