Table Of ContentThe Internet for Physicians
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
Roger P. Smith, M.D.
Medical College of Georgia
Augusta, Georgia
USA
Margaret J.A. Edwards, Ph.D., R.N.
Margaret J .A. Edwards & Associates
Calgary, Alberta
Canada
The Internet for Physicians
With 13 Illustrations
, Springer
Roger P. Smith, M.D. Margaret J.A. Edwards, Ph.D., R.N.
Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology Margaret J.A. Edwards & Associates, Inc.
Chief, of General Obstetrics and 52 Canova Road S.W.
Gynecology Calgary, Alberta TIW 2A6
Medical College of Georgia Canada
Augusta, GA 30912-3345
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Roger P. (Roger Perry). 1949-
The internet for physicians 1 Roger P. Smith, Margaret J.A.
Edwards.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-387-94936-9 ISBN 978-1-4757-6744-5 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-1-4757-6744-5
I. Medicine-Computer network resources. 2. Internet (Computer
network) I. Edwards, Margaret J.A. II. Title.
R859.7.D36S54 1997
004.67'8'0246I-<ic21 97-1014
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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Contents
Acknowledgments ..................................................................... vii
1. What Is the Internet? ............................................................ 1
What Is the Internet? ............ ...... ................... ............ ........................ 1
Where Did the Internet Come From? ............................................... 2
Who Owns and Operates the Internet? ......... ..... ......... ......... ......... .... 4
What Does the Internet Look Like? .................................................. 5
What Can I Do with the Internet? ................. ....... ......................... .... 6
2. How Does the Internet Work? ............................................. 7
Connecting to the Internet................................................................. 7
Types of Internet Connections ..... ........... ................. .... .............. ....... 7
What to Look for when Choosing an Internet Provider.................... 9
Finding Information on the Internet...... ............................ ................ 10
3. Using Electronic Mail (E-Mail) ........................................... 13
Anatomy of an E-Mail Message ...................................................... 14
Legal Issues ...................................................................................... 15
E-Mail Etiquette ................................................................................ 16
Mailing Lists..................................................................................... 18
4. Newsgroups ............................................................................ 21
What Is U senet? .................... ... .... ........................... ........... ........ ....... 21
Components of a U senet Article. ... ............. .... ......... ...... ..... .... ...... .... 22
Joining a Newsgroup ........................................................................ 23
Reading Articles ............................................................................... 23
Posting Articles ................................................................................. 24
Final Thoughts.................................................................................. 24
5. Telnet and FTP: Remote Login and Retrieval of
Information ............................................................................ 25
FTP ................................................................................................... 26
Locating Files Using Retrieval Systems ........................................... 27
6. Finding Information on the Internet ................................... 31
The Gopher.. ............. ......... .... ... ... ......... ........ ... ......... .... .......... .......... 31
vi The Internet for Physicians
WAIS ................................................................................................ 33
Wodd Wide Web.............................................................................. 34
Final Thoughts .................................................................................. 42
7. Medical Informatics .............................................................. 43
Information Processing ..................................................................... 43
Education... ....................................................................................... 45
Administration .................................................................................. 47
Clinical Applications................. ....................................................... 50
Appendix 1. Sources of Additional Information .................... 53
Appendix 2. Health-Related Internet Resources ................... 61
Medical Informatics.......................................................................... 61
Medical Reference and Disease-Specific Sites.............. .................. 94
Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals .......................... .................... .......... 123
Ancillary Support .............................................................................. 126
Miscellaneous: Humor ...................................................................... 129
Glossary ...................................................................................... 131
Index ........................................................................................... 141
Acknowledgments
Figure 6.4
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1
What Is the Internet?
What Is the Internet?
The idea of an "information age" can be daunting until one realizes that infor
mation has always been all around us. It is or may be managed, moved, and
organized in ways yet to be conceived. In medicine, information is vital, but the
exponential growth in the amount of information available requires new ap
proaches to its dissemination and use. Computers now offer the ability to man
age the growing amounts of available information in useful ways. Computers
are changing even the way we view information itself. Central to these concepts
is the Internet.
The Internet is nothing less than a library card to the world! It is interactive
games, access to genealogies, travel photos, rock music, museums, and country
stores. One moment you can be browsing through the Library of Congress or
looking at pictures from the National Library of Medicine and the next moment
conversing with a colleague in Indonesia. At the most basic level, the Internet is
a high-speed web of worldwide computer-based information resources con
nected together. It is often defined as a network of computer networks. From its
beginnings as a method of linking up 13 universities to allow the high-speed
transfer of research data, the Internet has evolved to a system of millions of sites
(computers) connected throughout the world. The Internet is dynamic, with new
sites being added at an exponential rate. Literally thousands more computers are
added every day, and with them come thousands of opportunities for informa
tion exchange.
Unlike the public library, the Internet does not have a structure that allows
the user to immediately know where to look for a given piece of information.
Because the Internet is an invisible infrastructure of electronic links (like the
telephone system), there is no master list of what information or resources are
available or where! This is actually an advantage. Because there is no overall
structure, the shape and face of the Internet are constantly changing to meet the
needs of the people who use it. Unlike the telephone system, which is planned
and managed by a handful of readily identifiable organizations, the Internet has
no corporate body. Rather, it is rather made up of loose associations of indi
viduals, institutions, and corporations. As a result, the character of the Internet,
indeed one of its founding premises, is that of change. Even in the catalog in
2 The Internet for Physicians
this book (Appendix II), there will be entries whose location has changed from
the time we write about them to the time you try to find them.
The real power of the Internet is in the people and information that all those
computers connect. The Internet is really a community that allows millions of
people around the world to communicate with one another. People voluntarily
share their time, ideas, and products, for the most part without any personal or
financial gain. Although it is the computers that move the information around
and execute the programs that allow us to access the information, it is the in
formation itself and the people connected to the information that make the In
ternet useful!
Where Did the Internet Come From?
The need to transfer information between computers was recognized soon after
computers were developed. At first, this type of information transfer was done
with magnetic tape or punch cards (remember, this was in the early 1960s).
These were then physically carried to the other computer, where the information
could be loaded from the tape or cards. This is still done today, but with files
written in ASCII format on a diskette. (This type of transfer is sometimes called
"sneaker net"). In the 1960s, computer scientists began exploring ways to di
rectly connect remote computers and their users.
In 1969, the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (ARPA) funded an experimental network called ARPANET. The main
goal of the ARPANET research was to link together the Department of Defense
and military research contractors (which included a large number of universi
ties) and to develop a reliable network. The development of a reliable network
involved the concept of dynamic rerouting, a concept that is key to understand
ing Internet communication today (see Chapter 2). Dynamic rerouting, from the
military perspective, allows communications on a network to be rerouted if part
of the network is destroyed by an enemy attack.
Figure 1.1 demonstrates the idea of dynamic rerouting. There are normally
direct communication links between all four locations, A, B, C, and D. In Figure
1.1, the direct link between locations A and B has been severed (more likely by
a backhoe than by hostile action). A and B cannot communicate directly along
the dotted line. However, A can still send messages to B in a number of differ
ent ways, as indicated by the solid lines in the figure. For example, the message
could be routed from A to D and then to B or from A to C and then to B or from
A to D to C and then to B. On the Internet, there is always more than one way
for the message to move from you to its intended recipient. This is how
ARPANET achieved its goal of developing a reliable network.
The ARPANET became very popular and many universities wanted to join
it. To accommodate the growing number of sites, the network also had to be
1. What is the Internet? 3
........... ..
~
A
t
c
D
Figure 1.1 Use of dynamic rerouting
able to add and remove new sites easily and to allow computers of many differ
ent types to communicate effortlessly. These needs led to the development of
the TCP/IP network protocol. TCPIIP (Transmission Control ProtocollInternet
Protocol) is the language used by computers connected to the ARPANET to talk
to each other. In the early 1980s all the interconnected research networks were
converted to the TCPIIP protocol. The ARPANET became the backbone
(physical connection) among all the sites. In the mid-1980s the National Science
Foundation established supercomputer centers around the United States. The
plan for researchers around the United States to use the ARPANET to connect
to those supercomputers did not work out, so the National Science Foundation
funded the development of NSFNET. In 1990, ARPANET was shut down and
replaced by NSFNET, which now provides the backbone for Internet communi
cations in the United States.
In Canada, research networking began in the early 1980s. NetNorth, the Ca
nadian equivalent of the American BitNet organization, was created in early
1984. During 1985 to 1988, most of the larger universities began multiyear
