Medscape is a website providing access to medical information for clinicians; the organization also provides continuing education for physicians and health professionals. It references medical journal articles,
Continuing Medical Education (CME), a version of the
National Library of Medicine
The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library.
Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Its ...
's
MEDLINE
MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering medic ...
database, medical news, and drug information (Medscape Drug Reference, or MDR). At one time Medscape published seven electronic peer reviewed journals.
History
Medscape launched May 22, 1995 by SCP Communications, Inc. under the direction of its CEO Peter Frishauf. In 1999,
George D. Lundberg became the editor-in-chief of Medscape. For seventeen years before joining Medscape he had served as Editor of the ''
Journal of the American Medical Association''.
In September 1999, Medscape, Inc. went public and began trading on
NASDAQ under the symbol MSCP. In 2000, Medscape merged with MedicaLogic, Inc., another public company. MedicaLogic filed for bankruptcy within 18 months and sold Medscape to
WebMD
WebMD is an American corporation known primarily as an online publisher of news and information pertaining to human health and well-being. The site includes information pertaining to drugs. It is one of the top healthcare websites.
It was fou ...
in December 2001. In 2008, Lundberg was terminated by WebMD. The following year the ''Medscape Journal of Medicine'' ceased publishing. In January 2013,
Eric Topol
Eric Jeffrey Topol (born 26 June 1954) is an American cardiologist, scientist, and author. He is the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, a professor of Molecular Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute, and a ...
was named editor-in-chief of Medscape. The same year, Lundberg returned to Medscape as
editor-at-large.
In 2009, WebMD released an iOS application of Medscape, followed by an Android version two years later. In 2015, WebMD launched Medscape CME & Education on iOS. In 2021, Medscape launched Medscape UK to expand their business in United Kingdom.
Criticism from Doctors
in 2012, Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, MD, Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Ottawa and the medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute wrote an article entitled "Why I Can No Longer Trust Medscape". In it he wrote that Medscape is "putting patients at risk by actively misinforming their physicians." He also noted poor vetting of studies that Medscape chooses to publish as his reason for stating this.
In 2016 a survey of Doctors found Web MD and its sister company Medscape to have incomplete medical information lacking depth and also numerous cases of misinformation on their sites. A study of Medscape and Web MD also found both services to lack neutrality and exhibiting bias potentially based on very high payments (compared to their industry competitors) from the pharmaceutical industry.
References
External links
* {{Official website
American medical websites
Internet properties established in 1995