to learn which features you will have access to
and how much it will cost. This should be
weighed against your specific needs and budget
limitations. Once you have adjusted to the
Internet and find it essential, you may decide
to move over to a university account and
drastically lower your costs.
While the Internet is expanding, its basic types
of services are:
1. E-Mail. With this system, you prepare a
communication using a text editor, and
then send it to an e-mail address, which is in
the form of a code, containing the
symbol @. To the left of the symbol is the
recipient's name or assigned code
number, and on the right are letters and
numbers separated by dots. These serve
to identify the recipient's department and
institution ("domains"). The last three
letters indicate the type of institution (such
as educational, edu.; commercial,
com.; governmental, gov., etc.) (A two-letter
overseas code may be used instead
of the three-letter institutional code when
appropriate.)
Dialing your Internet account via a local phone
number permits you to send
your message locally, cross-country, or
overseas, at no extra cost. It should be
noted that with e-mail you lose the privacy
provided by the postal service, but
you gain in speed and delivery
reliability.
2. Internet "chat." This is similar to e-mail,
but involves "talking" to the recipi-
ent by typing messages back and forth. It
provides instant access and prompt
response but requires some degree of rapid
typing skill. Internet books provide
pointers on "computer-etiquette."
3. Projecting. There are networks that enable
you to link up with "news-groups"
and provide access to mailing lists of
computerized meetings.
After mastering e-mail and news-groups
technique, the basis has been set to
move out and access computers located in
distant places with the assistance of
available commercial services, such as Gopher,
Tel-net, ftp (file transfer proto-
col), etc.
For the medical student, the Internet provides
a means for a break from the isolation
of study and tension of exams and rounds. It
allows one to communicate with old or
new friends by e-mail or
"chatting."
The Internet provides students with the ability
to access numerous medical informa-
tion sites and, as computer skills improve,
more medical students and physicians will
take advantage of it and benefit from
it.
MEDICAL INFORMATICS
Access to medical information by computer is
constantly increasing. To facilitate the
orderly acquisition of such data, the field of
medical informatics, the application of
information technology to medicine, has
emerged. Medical Informatics is a new devel-
oping discipline that is geared to play a role
in the critical realm of decision support.
This involves helping physicians obtain the
essential data that enables them to make
medical decisions. Other areas impacted by this
new field are medical education, elec-
tronic medical records, natural language
processing, telemedicine, and artificial intelli-
gence. Physicians may be involved in this field
on a full- or part-time basis.
Prerequisites for entering the area of Medical
Informatics are a strong interest in
computers, an ability to collaborate with
others, a strong sense of curiosity, and a desire
to experiment and teach. Fellowships are
available through the National Library of
Medicine, Biomedical Information Support
Branch, Extramural Program, 8600
Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894 (web site:
http://www.N/m.nih.gov./).
The University of Missouri--Columbia School of
Medicine has established a
department of health management and
informatics. It will offer graduate degrees in
health informatics and health
administration.
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