Physician Resources 159
Coffee Break: Tutorials for Biologists18
Coffee Break is a general healthcare site that takes a scientific view of the news and covers recent breakthroughs in biology that may one day assist physicians in developing treatments. Here you will find a collection of short reports on recent biological discoveries. Each report incorporates interactive tutorials that demonstrate how bioinformatics tools are used as a part of the research process. Currently, all Coffee Breaks are written by NCBI staff.19 Each report is about 400 words and is usually based on a discovery reported in one or more articles from recently published, peer-reviewed literature.20 This site has new articles every few weeks, so it can be considered an online magazine of sorts. It is intended for general background information. You can access the Coffee Break Web site at the following hyperlink: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Coffeebreak/.
Other Commercial Databases
In addition to resources maintained by official agencies, other databases exist that are commercial ventures addressing medical professionals. Here are some examples that may interest you:
•CliniWeb International: Index and table of contents to selected clinical information on the Internet; see http://www.ohsu.edu/cliniweb/.
•Medical World Search: Searches full text from thousands of selected medical sites on the Internet; see http://www.mwsearch.com/.
18Adapted from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Coffeebreak/Archive/FAQ.html.
19The figure that accompanies each article is frequently supplied by an expert external to NCBI, in which case the source of the figure is cited. The result is an interactive tutorial that tells a biological story.
20After a brief introduction that sets the work described into a broader context, the report focuses on how a molecular understanding can provide explanations of observed biology and lead to therapies for diseases. Each vignette is accompanied by a figure and hypertext links that lead to a series of pages that interactively show how NCBI tools and resources are used in the research process.