Under the motto "Sharing knowledge, strengthening health", the National Heart Alliance, an initiative of the DGK and all the major German specialist societies for cardiovascular medicine, has launched a new information portal, Herzmedizin.de, to provide more information on the subject of cardiovascular health. The special feature: The platform is aimed at members of the DGK and BNK, physicians and medical staff as well as heart patients and interested parties. It provides comprehensive information on all cardiac and circulatory diseases, their (early) detection, diagnosis, prevention, therapy options and rehabilitation, all of which have been thoroughly reviewed and approved by cardiologists. "Our wish was to bring together all the relevant information on the subject of heart medicine in one place and to make it interesting, informative and accessible to all those concerned, be they patients or experts, at eye level," says PD Dr Stefan Perings, one of the two editors of the portal.
Cardiovascular disease is the number one public health problem. Despite this, they are often under-recognised by the general public and their impact is often underestimated. Many people believe that the causes are almost entirely self-inflicted, for example through unhealthy lifestyles such as smoking, poor diet or lack of physical activity. However, these classic risk factors explain only about half of all cardiovascular diseases; with certain cardiovascular diseases such as heart muscle weakness they are not associated at all. "Although there is already a wide range of information on health issues available on the Internet, this sometimes contradictory information tends to confuse people and provides little orientation - especially for patients and their families. We want to change this with Herzmedizin.de, especially in the large area of cardiovascular diseases," said Prof. Stephan Baldus, former president of the DGK.
The Herzmedizin.de platform went online for the first time at the annual meeting of the German Society of Cardiology, which took place from the 12th to the 15th of April in Mannheim. The joint venture BAUERSERVICEPLAN was won over as a partner for the concept and design of the Internet platform as well as its technical implementation. The portal is operated by HKM - Herz-Kreislauf-Medizin gGmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of DGK.