State-of-the-art health guide created

Harvard Medical School believes it has a cure for problems associated with finding accurate, up-to-date medical information: a comprehensive (1,288 pages), $40 medical guide tied to a Web site that will update the book weekly. Published by Simon and Schuster in October 1999, it’s the first family health guide that will never go out of date. The idea for the Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide came from Anthony Komaroff, a professor of medicine at the Medical School and the book’s editor-in-chief. “I’m a passionate advocate of building a knowledge base of complete medical information for a general audience,” he said. “And this is a good beginning.” The Guide boasts chapters on diseases and disorders of all kinds, as well as chapters on the health of infants, children, adolescents, women, men, and seniors.