[Strategic challenges of the Internet to the laboratory informatics]

The rapid and general spread of the internet brings a lot of trials for its applications to our fields also. They include delivery of various information using the home page or e-mail, online consultation systems, quality control systems through the internet and more. So far, the security issues have been well managed with skillful administration of software and hardware. A part of them have been achieved the outstanding merits of the internet, but mostly more devices or investigation will be required to realize their intrinsic great virtue. The revolutionary progress of the network will never stop, rather will be accelerated more and more, and at last will lead us to the new era, in which all people in the world can communicate with each other at all times through the network, that may be named as the hyper-network community. So we all must considerate how to adapt our academic and medical field to the new era, rather than how to apply the internet in our field.