The Internet is one of those revolutionary inventions which occur only every 50 or 100 years in the history of mankind. I don't think it's exaggerated to say that, in relation to the dissemination of information, this global computer network, which around March 1997 interconnected ca. 15 million computers and 90 million users, is as revolutionary, or even more, than the invention of the typesetting press by Gutenberg, 500 years ago.
Only those who have already tried to search for information on the Internet know how this resource is spetacularly different from everything that has existed so far. In a matter of minutes (rather than hours or days spent in libraries, usually with frustating results, due to the difficulty of finding journals or articles) a global search mechanism, like Altavista, can locate hundreds or thousands of documents and images spread around the world. The problem is now of an entirely different nature: those who use the Internet are not worried about how to find it (this is fast and easy), neither where to find it (the required document arrives to their screen in a few seconds or minutes, independently of its location), nor how much it will cost (usually it's for free). The problem now is what to do with such huge amounts of information you get back from the Internet !
The Internet changes everything. The medical publications, old and well established; and even the publishing houses and libraries, are threatened with extinction within a few years. The advantages of Internet-based publications are so large that scientific communication will never be the same. Every physician needs, if he already hasn't done it, to learn how to use this new resource in his/her daily struggle for information. Those who don't, due to stuborness or ignorance (because high costs are no longer an excuse), are risking to be compared to pterodactyles.
The Internet is classifying the health professional into two kinds of people: those who use it and those who don't. In the competitive world of Medicine, who wins ? It's easy to answer...But although 90% of the physicians, or more, recognize that becoming an Internet user is inevitable as time goes by, probably less than 10 % of Brazilian physicians are really using it (larger figures can be expected in the industrialized democracies, but they are not much different from this in the rest of the world). Why there is such a large difference between the numbers of those who want to access Internet and those who really do it ?
The answer is, of course, awareness, knowledge and training. In order to use well the Internet, it's necessary to be a good computer user, to have a minimum set of skills and knowledge on Informatics. But it's also necessary to know how to operate the basic programs that facilitate Internet acess, and where to look for the desired information. This is not trivial, as one may think, due to the ever-growing volume of information being published in the Internet (more than 1,000 medical journals are already on-line, and ca. 15,000+ sites, too (this is the name we give in the Internet tp a related set of information resources under the same address).
The purpose of this new magazine, with the pioneering support of Searle Brazil, is exactly this: to show the "right path" to the fellow doctor. Our magazine starts from its inception with a clear educational vocation, with the aim of helping the learning of technological skills by the physician, in a simple and direct language, easy to understand, customized to your order. Here you will learn how to obtain from Internet all the information you need in your specialty, such as the technical details that will enable you to save time and money, and to achieve the maximum efficiency possible. The UNICAMP Center for Biomedical Informatics welcomes all interested readers. In this and in the next issues, both in the printed and in the on-line version, we will explore together the fantastic world of the Medical Internet.
Published by:
The Center for Biomedical Informatics State University of Campinas Brazil © 1997 Renato M.E. Sabbatini |
Sponsored by:
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