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Published in BMJ 2003;326:290

For a slick site on the herpesvirus check out the International Herpes Management Forum (www.IHMF.org). It is an attractively designed site packed with data, easily signposted from the home page. Features include a journal, guidelines and a resources section.

Published in Viral Immunology 2002;15:517–518

THE IHMF (International Herpes Management Forum) website is a thorough and informative website (www.ihmf.org) specifically targeting clinicians who have interests in management of the various herpesvirus infections of humans. The website is of high quality, and is easy to navigate. When first arriving at the site, you are immediately drawn to a large herpesvirus capsid-shaped icon in which are presented clickable links to the six major sections of the website. These six sections are IHMF Activities, Herpes Journal, Regional Management Forums, Physician’s Resources, On-Line Learning Zone, and Monographs and Guidelines. There is an abundance of useful information for both clinicians and patients within these sections. For example, the Monographs and Guidelines section contains monographs describing recommended management guidelines for healthcare professionals dealing with various herpesvirus infections, including herpes simplex virus, varicella–zoster virus, Epstein–Barr Virus, cytomegalovirus, and the human herpesviruses 6, 7, and 8. There are ten monographs in this section, dealing with a variety of subjects, such as herpesviruses and organ transplantation, pregnancy, immunodeficiency and more. The monographs consist of algorithms (i.e., flow charts) describing management strategies for herpesvirus-infected individuals, or more descriptive outlines of similar management strategies.

A second useful section of this website is the direct link to Herpes Journal, which provides interested parties with full online access to the official journal of the IHMF. Herpes Journal contains review articles with strong emphasis on clinical applications, and should be a valuable resource for medical professionals.

The Physician’s Resource section presents a large amount of useful information, including a bibliography of key papers, general information on herpesviruses and molecular biology, information on future scientific meetings of interest, and information on past meetings. This last feature is perhaps the most impressive, as access to not only abstracts from IHMF meetings, but also PowerPoint slides from selected keynote and symposium seminars that occurred at these meetings is provided within these pages. Many of the PowerPoint presentations are of high quality and should be very beneficial for teaching purposes. The Physician’s Resource also provides links, both internal and external, which may be of use to many users.

Two of the sections, IHMF activities and Regional Management Forums, deal mainly with the IHMF, its website, scientific meetings and local HMFs. For example, the Regional Management Forums section provides links to HMF organizations around the globe. Also, the feedback section contains a questionnaire and opportunities for one to voice their opinions on the website or the IHMF itself.

The final section, On-line Learning Zone, is somewhat perplexing, as clicking on this link leads you to a largely blank page. Presumably, the IHMF will be providing learning tools here, and a link to a downloadable PowerPoint viewer suggests this will soon be the case.

Also present are a number of clickable links on the home page that are not related to the six sections described above. There is a Patient’s Resource section, devoted to information for patients (translated into several languages), as well as a specific section dedicated to various corporate-sponsored herpesvirus-related awards for scientists (including downloadable award applications for the GlaxoSmithKline Elion Awards and information about past winners of these awards).

Importantly, the IHMF website is highly interactive, with plenty of opportunities for users to offer feedback, contact the IHMF with questions, take part in surveys, and even join an E-mail club in which you will be notified by E-mail of IHMF website updates. This facet of the IHMF website is driven home as soon as you come to their home page, as a pop-up window offers the chance of winning a prize (in this case a digital camera) for completing a herpes-related survey.

Altogether, the IHMF website is extremely impressive, with a plethora of useful information for medical professionals and some useful information for patients. The one weakness of the website is the paucity of basic science in herpesvirus biology that might be of interest to readers of journals such as Viral Immunology, although several basic science papers are cited in the Bibliography section, while reviews in the Herpes Journal may also be of interest. However, the purpose of the website is not to be a resource for basic herpes virologists. Indeed, as stated on the website, the goal of IHMF.org is to give “all visitors—from specialists and healthcare workers to patients seeking more information about their disease—the opportunity to view and download the educational guidelines produced by the IHMF; to give feedback on IHMF-related materials and meetings; and to establish contact between local HMFs worldwide.” The IHMF has attained this goal quite remarkably.

Mark D. Trottier, Jr., Ph.D. 1009 Main Building New York University 100 Washington Square East New York, NY 10003

Published in Sexually Transmitted Infections 2000;76:498

The range of the website is greater than I expected, covering CMV, EBV, HHV-6, 7, and 8, varicella, as well as HSV-1 and HSV-2. The search option gives a rapid indication of the scale of the site. I was impressed with the search by "free text query." My 20 word query concerning recurrent herpes in the third trimester revealed 162 relevant references on the website.

The website contains a library consisting of recent papers and a series of monographs produced by the IHMF. Arising out of these monographs are management guidelines on various aspects of herpes viruses. Updates on key issues are to be found in the Herpes Journal, published three times a year, and reproduced in full on this site.

Further useful aspects of this site include PowerPoint slides, which can be downloaded, covering background scientific information as well as some presentations of IHMF meetings. Abstracts from these meetings may also be downloaded as well as posters summarising recommendations. A list of forthcoming events and reports from past meetings can also be accessed.

Another section on this site allows you to click anywhere on a world map to find organisations working on herpes. A click in the UK revealed the MSSVD, the Herpes Special Interest Group, and the British Co-operative Clinical Group.

This site is useful in many ways and provides an authoritative source of information. There is a section for feedback so that users of the site can contribute to keeping it accurate and up to date.

Chris Carne

This review is also available at the Sexually Transmitted Infections journal website.
 

Published in Infection 2000;28:401-402

The IHMF (International Herpes Management Forum) website is a welcome forum for clinicians caring for patients with various diseases caused by herpesviruses. The icosahedron symbolizing a herpesvirus particle is part of many facets of the page. Six chapters can be chosen from the start page, each contained in an herpesvirus-like icon and all six are grouped as if attached onto the surface of a herpesvirus. They comprise: Management Guidelines, Herpes Journal, Global Links, Library, Congress Centre and Feedback. The style is dependent on the chapter selected.

Management Guidelines presents information on diagnosis and treatment of almost all herpesvirus manifestations. In some instances work in progress can be submitted in order to contribute to draft algorithms, e.g. for the management of genital herpes. Dosage and treatment regimens are not provided. Therefore, this section of the website can be used as a source of general information but not as a treatment reference. References to the medical literature are not made here. However, this is compensated for somewhat in the chapter Library which contains a selection of reviews and original papers. Of particular interest is the possibility to download information material, e.g. a slide kit on herpes and immune suppression from a paper on management of genital herpes. This service is probably of great interest for any user of the website.

Global Links shows a global map and provides further links to local and national herpes management forum subsidiaries. As the title suggests, Congress Centre can be used to obtain information on conferences held by IHMF (both past and forthcoming).

HERPES is a review journal available on the web http://www.ihmf.org/journal/jou_con.asp issued by the IHMF. It aims to provide clinicians with a regular update on key issues and recommendations relating to all aspects of patient management of herpesvirus infections and their sequelae. For example, issue 3, volume 7 contained four reviews: on the history of varicella zoster virus (VZV), on the discovery of cytomegalovirus (CMV) and the current knowledge about the virus and its diseases, on human herpesvirus 6 (HHV 6), and an overview on Epstein-Barr virus. All papers are carefully referenced and contain concise information without leaving out important details. The understanding of virological and immunological features is explicitly enhanced by photographs and schematic figures explaining viral replication and the immune response. Clear tables inform the reader at a quick glance about historical dates and clinical features. The clinical pictures relating to visible clinical manifestations in patients with VZV, CMV, HHV 6 and EBV infections are impressive. Thus the reader gets an excellent and most up-to-date review which has the quality of a chapter in an advanced textbook on infectious diseases. This combination is usually the hallmark of top journals with high impact factors. HERPES is published three times a year and is also available as a hard copy version. Subscription is GBP 51 (Europe).

I recommend the IHMF website including its journal HERPES to all clinicians in the fields of infectious and sexually transmitted diseases. It might also be of interest for those basic virologists and virologists specialized in diagnostics who like to keep in touch with clinical medicine.

Johannes Bogner, Munich, Germany

Published in the Postgraduate Medical Journal 2000;76:581

This large site has the most comprehensive collection imaginable of monographs, original papers and pictures on herpesvirus infections. Not just herpes simplex virus and varicella but cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, human herpes virus 6, 7 and 8 are all exhaustively covered.

Complete monographs can be downloaded from the Library section or, alternatively, there are shorter management guidelines on such topics as herpesvirus infections in pregnancy and clinical implications of latency. There is also a whole section entitled Molecular Biology – all you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask!

The site’s welcome page implies that it will be useful to visitors ranging from specialists to patients but the format is heavily weighted in favour of healthcare professionals. Most patients would need a good medical dictionary at hand and the format is bland and rather uninviting for the casual visitor.

For specialists there is a journal club and there are regularly updated details of international virology meetings on another of the main sections. Also featured is a world map with links to herpesvirus organizations across the globe.

An Acrobat reader and PowerPoint are required to utilize large parts of the site but anyone with these facilities can download entire lecture presentations of high quality.

The site is sponsored by a pharmaceutical company but is not heavily promotional. Highly recommended.

TG Stammers, London, UK

Published in the helper, Winter 2000;p6

There are hundreds of herpes websites floating around out there. Some are reliable, others aren’t. the helper would like to help you choose which websites you can rely on for accurate, up-to-date herpes information. Sometimes it’s easy to think of herpes in terms of its effects on the American population, but herpes is truly a global concern and one that the International Herpes Management Forum (IHMF) has been focusing on since 1993. IHMF’s mission is to improve the awareness and understanding of herpesviruses (all types, not just herpes simplex), and the counselling and management of people with herpesvirus infections. The organization’s site, www.ihmf.org, is a wealth of international information on herpes. Many topics are geared toward healthcare professionals, but according to IHMF, approximately half of their visitors are patients. They also have a number of links to other international herpes websites that are great resources. So if you are looking for scientifically accurate and advanced herpes information, you might want to visit www.ihmf.org.

MedExplorer has selected the website of the IHMF as a top rated site.

MedExplorer is a quality health and medical search engine. Top rated sites are judged on a variety of criteria, including usefulness, content, design, speed and relevance to targeted audience.

The website of the IHMF has received an award by Med411, which is a medical directory for healthcare professionals. Criteria on which our site was judged include:

• Content of interest to healthcare professionals

• Tone and presentation maintained at a professional level

• Site structure, navigation and graphic design executed at a professional level.
  

IHMF.org is Highly Recommended by Lycos

healthfinder® 

The IHMF website is included in healthfinder®, a database of information providers maintained by the National Health Information Center (NHIC), a US government-sponsored organization.

healthfinder® links its users to online publications, clearing-houses, databases, websites, support and self-help groups from government agencies, colleges and universities, and not-for-profit organizations that produce reliable health information.