National Guideline Clearinghouse

Today I looked at the National Guideline Clearinghouse database for healthcare professionals. The objective of the database is to provided healthcare providers with information, guidelines and even purchasers. The database is put together by a board of health care professionals. Healthcare providers can submit guidelines that are then reviewed by the board and even annually reviewed to insure that the information is up to date and still relevant. The database is user friendly but does not have alot of bells and whistles. There is a download option where users can open documents in other programs like word. One really neat option is the compare guidelines button. A patrons can select two or more guidelines and then hit the compare button and the database will line the guidelines up next to each other and compare the two against one another in each catagory. The database provides articles, guideline sheets and expert commentaries where users can comment.
After reviewing this database, I will say that it seems like it was not intended for people with little or not medical background. The information is cery technical and I can honestly admitt that more often than not I had no understanding of what I was reading. I think it could be very helpful for healthcare professionals or students that are at the end of their degree program, but probably not the beginners or someone in lets say, education. It did seem to me that there was alot of information. So for the right users I think it could be very helpful.