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British Society for Rheumatology

Overview

The British Society for Rheumatology (BSR) is a professional body for people working in rheumatology and related fields. The website is funded by an educational grant from Boehringer Ingelheim. The majority of content on the site is for professionals, although there is section dedicated to patients.

Content

The site is divided into five sections, which I will describe briefly in this report.

The 'BSR Information' section contains a wealth of information about the BSR, starting with an outline of its work and structure. It covers details of membership, CME courses, special interest groups, and members of the various BSR committees.

The 'General Rheumatology' section covers statistical information on the prevalence of arthritis, and defines rheumatic illnesses and the role of a rheumatologist. It also hosts a 'meeting diary', which lists relevant national and international meetings and courses. For each entry, the title, location and contact details are given, with online links where available. There is also a list of contact details for all major professional associations and societies.

The 'Information for Patients' section has external links to patient sites, plus FAQs on what to expect when seeing a rheumatologist. Most usefully, it has a vast list of contact details (and urls) for arthritis patient support groups and associations.

The 'Clinical Publications' section is solely for professionals, and links to online resources such as clinical and management guidelines, government reports, and the BCR's official journal Rheumatology. Finally there is access to the Heberden Library Catalogue, which is a huge collection of rheumatology resources (eg manuscripts, engravings, slides) dating from the 16th century.

The 'News' section supposedly contains topical news and research findings, although at the time of review it was empty. However this section does contains a link to PubMed, the US National Library of Medicine's interface for searching MEDLINE and other bibliographic databases.

Finally, there is a Members' area, which is password protected to restrict access to BSR members. This area contains information on clinical governance, guidelines under review, a list of UK consultants by town, and a membership directory (under development).

Other comments

No-frames version available. Pages are not individually named so bookmarks will always take you to the home page. The site is extensively cross-linked and there is a menu bar to move between sections; however, there are no intrasite navigation buttons so moving within a section can be difficult. There was no indication of when the site was last updated, but the information all appeared to be up-to-date and regularly revised (for example the meetings database listed events from the present until 2001).

Evaluation

The large number of duplicated links and pages, combined with the lack of navigation buttons, make the site seem unnecessarily complicated. However, once rectified by a thorough edit and rearrangement of the content, this site would be useful to UK rheumatologists as a source of information about meetings, guidelines, publications, and BSR activities. Also of practical interest is the comprehensive list of professional and patient associations in the field.

References

  1. British Society for Rheumatology. [http://www.rheumatology.org.uk/]

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Lyford, J. British Society for Rheumatology. Arthritis Res Ther 2, 0008 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1186/ar-2000-2-webreport0008

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/ar-2000-2-webreport0008

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