title: Role of Internet in medicine.
abstract: Internet, the largest network of connected computers, is becoming the ultimate frontier to access information for health providers. This review focus on how developments of this communication technology have become a useful educational resource in medicine, and describes modest ideas in computer network use. Internet basic resources are electronic mailing (E-mail), discussion groups, file transfer, and browsing the World Wide Web (WWW). E-mail brings physicians with common interest together. Surgeons employ it as a communicating tool. Legal and social responsibility is bounded with its use. Discussion groups permits debate including clinical cases, operations, techniques research, career opportunities, and meetings. File transfer provides the opportunity of retrieving archives from public libraries. The WWW is the most resourceful tool due to its friendly interface and ease of navigation. The average physician needs to know almost nothing on how computers work or where they came from to navigate through this pandemonium of information. Click and play with today graphical applications encourage the computer illiterate to connect. Establishing the connections envelops the need of hardware, software and a service provider. Future development consists of online journals with new ideas in peer-review and authentication, telemedicine progression, international chatting, and centralization of cyber space information into database or keyword search engines.
authors.affiliation: University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, San Juan. titolugo@coqui.net
authors.forename: H L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Lugo-Vicente
mesh_terms: D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans