The medical information superhighway

Commercial and private use of the Internet has grown exponentially over the last few years. Its estimated size increases by more than 10% per month. Medical information and resources are now available to aid physicians in practice and in research. Users can utilize email to communicate with other medical professionals around the world. The newest and possibly most significant development on the Internet is the World Wide Web. Through it, physicians may access multimedia resources such as databases of medical information, recent news and research, atlases, and electronic journals using an intuitive graphics interface. Medically related software can be obtained from the vast archives on the Internet via the FTP function. As the Internet expands and becomes more ubiquitious, its uses will multiply and become an important mode of medical information dissemination and acquisition.