A model for connecting doctors to university based medical resources through the Internet

Medical Students and academics at large universities have access to rich and varied information resources. These resources tend not to be available from off campus sites. We have been running a trial to connect practicing doctors to some of the medical resources that are available within our university. We are using the Internet to facilitate this process. In doing so, a large number of non academic, but very practical problems have had to be solved. We examine in particular the roles that Internet service providers and Internet information providers play in such a project. In particular we describe the factors used in advising users on external service providers, and why we as part of a university have chosen not to fulfil the internet service provision role ourselves.