Configuring for the World Wide Web: recommendations for dermatologists

Physicians have become increasingly interested in obtaining the hardware, software, and connection necessary to take advantage of the educational and practice material available on the World Wide Web (WWW) (i.e., on the Internet). The related ongoing development of unique on-line resources promises to provide a compelling force for change in the way in which information is accessed and medicine is practiced. WWW applications created for dermatologists often include high-quality images, and proper viewing is critical to use this information. Because images tend to be large files, and dermatology resources tend to have from several up to hundreds of images, the speed of transfer and display and the quality of the display are important factors to consider. This study was an evaluation of some of the current options in the hardware, software, and Internet connections to determine desirable configurations for accessing image-rich, on-line dermatology WWW applications.