The Emergence of an Interactive Digital Medium

Transcription

1 CE U P D A T E C O M P U T E R S I Nasir K. Amra The Emergence of an Interactive Digital Medium As the telecommunications industry and the computer industry rapidly converge, the pace of change in our lives and our work is bound to speed up as well. The promise of the advancements in computers and telecommunication technology is so great, in fact, that Vice President Al Gore has issued a challenge to the telecommunications industry to build a data superhighway through which everyone will have access to numerous volumes of digital information, just as there is universal access to telephone service. In this article, we explore the concept of a data superhighway and its potential importance to medicine in general and pathology in particular. ABSTRACT The Internet and the World Wide Web are opening doors to communication among millions of people around the world. Such communication includes instant publication and distribution of documents. This article explores such Internet services as electronic mail,filetransfer protocol, newsgroups and hypermedia, and World Wide Web sites. This article also lists some on-line medical resources that the reader can access as starting points in exploring the World Wide Web and the Internet. This is the first article in a four-part c o n t i n u i n g education series on c o m puters. By the end of the series, participants w i l l u n d e r s t a n d the principles of the Internet and the W o r l d W i d e W e b, the d r i v i n g forces b e h i n d the d e v e l o p m e n t of regional health care i n f o r m a t i o n n e t w o r k s, the use a n d What Is the Internet? The Internet began more than 20 years ago as a government research project, whose mission was to connect geographically separated computers. Today, millions of users access the worldwide matrix of interconnected computer networks. The Internet is growing at an exponential pace: each year the number of Internet users doubles. That growth is driven by the availability of numerous information sources and communication services as well as the reliable digital information transfer available through the Internet. In this article, we discuss the following Internet services: electronic mail ( ); mailing lists; USENET, an electronic conferencing system; file transfer; Gopher, an Internet navigation tool; the World Wide Web (WWW), a hypermedia information network; and a multiplatform client program to access the WWW such as Netscape or Mosaic. All these services allow the user to retrieve biomedical information from the Internet. Electronic Mail Electronic mail, or , allows a person to type a message on a computer and send it to another creation of w i n d o w s files for the laboratory, and h o w c o m p u t e r i z e d syst e m s can i m p r o v e efficiency in surgical pathology. person who has a computer account on the Internet. The US Postal Service can take 3 days to deliver a message nationally, can take from a few seconds to a couple of minutes to transfer a message from one location to another, anywhere in the world that is connected to the Internet. Some people are familiar with available locally, for instance through a laboratory information system, through a local area network of computers, or through such commercial services as CompuServe or Prodigy. becomes exponentially more useful, however, when local or isolated computer networks become connected to the Internet, thereby widening the pool of correspondents. The communication span of the Internet is expanding at an exponential rate. For instance, one can send messages to the President of the United States (president@whitehouse.com) or to NBC's Nightly News program (nightly@nbc.com). For users, mailing lists provide a way of communicating with a group that shares similar VOLUME 28. NUMBER 1 From the Puckett Group, PA, Hattiesburg, Miss. Reprint requests to Mr Amra, Puckett Group, PA, 4200 Mamie St, Hattiesburg, MS 39402; or namra@ibm.net

2 Cyber Talk Below are terms to help you navigate the World Wide Web. Electronic mail. A method for sending messages, including attachments, from one computer to another. FTP: File transfer protocol. A method for transferring files across the Internet. Gopher: A research tool that lets you specify the type of information for which you are searching. URL: Universal resource locator. An address the Internet can use to find a file, domain, or individual. World Wide Web: A hypertext tool that lets you quickly jump to related topics. From Spear B. Internet (argon. Editors Only. May 1995;6 8. Used by permission. interests. Mailing lists exist for a variety of topics. A user may subscribe to a mailing list by sending to the mailing list address. The subscriber then is able to send and receive dealing with the mailing list topic. The following are examples of some medical mailing lists: Test Your Knowledge Look for the CE Update exam on Computers (701) in the April issue of Laboratory Medicine. Participants will earn 4 CIVILE credit hours..aidsnews, devoted to news about AIDS/HIV ALCOHOL, discusses alcohol and drug studies ANEST-L, deals with all matters related to anesthesiology > CADUCEUS, discusses medical history collections.clinart, distributes clinical alerts from the National Institutes of Health to subscribers of the mailing list FAMILY-L, discusses academic family medicine FORENS-L, a forensic medicine and science interest group mailing list JMEDCLUB, a medical journal discussion club; QML, discusses issues relating to quantitative morphology demonstrates that the power of the Internet lies in its ability to remove geographic and temporal barriers to communication. When these barriers are removed, virtual communities, whose members are from anywhere in the world, form around common interests. How does one find a person's address? On-line directory services are a good starting point. Unfortunately, such lists are never comprehensive. The simplest way, however, is to write or call the person with whom you wish to correspond electronically and ask for his or her address. Electronic Conferencing An alternative to mailing lists is the electronic conferencing service of the Internet. This service comprises newsgroups, which allow people to VOLUME 28, NUMBER 1 read and post articles about a variety of subjects. More than 2,100 different newsgroups exist that generate large volumes of articles on a daily basis. The name of a newsgroup is hierarchical: newsgroups dealing with related subjects have similar prefixes in the name. For example, the bionet.genome.chrom22 newsgroup discusses chromosome 22, while bionet.immunology discusses immunology research. Both newsgroups begin with the prefix "bionet" indicating the general subject area of biology. Other medically relevant newsgroups are sci.bio.technology for the discussion of technology in biology, sci.med.radiol for discussion centered on radiology, sci.med.telemedicine for discussion related to medical or hospital networks, and sci.med.pathology for discussions related to pathology and laboratory medicine. Other nonmedical newsgroups include alt.fan.dave_barry for discussing Dave Barry's humor columns, and alt.fishing for discussing fishing. Information on how to find available newsgroups on the Internet is provided in the table. File Transfer The nature of and electronic conferencing is transient. You most likely will not be able to find a message that was posted on a mailing list or newsgroup a month ago. This shortcoming led to the development of host sites on the Internet that not only archive files dealing with selected mailing lists or newsgroups, but also archive public domain software for a variety of computers, books, newsletters, magazines, sounds, and images. The file transfer protocol (FTP) allows one to retrieve a file from a remote computer to a local computer. Most archive sites provide public access to such files. In other words, a person can retrieve a file without having a computer account on the remote computer (otherwise known as an anonymous FTP). The drawback with most programs that use the FTP service, however, is that one needs to know where to look (ie, the name of the remote computer and the location of the file) as well as the two or three commands used by FTP to retrieve a file. Gopher Gopher, a program created at the University of Minnesota, helps alleviate the problem of navigating through the tremendous amount of information on the Internet. Gopher navigates the Internet with an easy-to-use menu-driven interface. Several software packages allow a user to

3 *» access Gopher from Macintosh or IBM-compatible personal computers that are connected to the Internet. These packages organize information into directories and files available on the Internet. A window on the computer screen lists directories or files accessible from Gopher. When accessing the contents of a directory, the Gopher software automatically gathers the names of files and subdirectories regardless of where these files are on the Internet and displays the result in a new window on the computer screen. These Gopher packages also transparently use the FTP protocol to retrieve files from remote hosts on the Internet. The combined Internet services of Gopher and FTP have led to an explosion of electronic publications. This has been driven by increased commercial interests in the Internet, a federal government administration that has pushed to make federally gathered information more accessible electronically, universities and academic centers setting up campuswide information centers accessible from the Internet, and individual efforts to publish noncopyrighted information over the Internet. The fruits of all these efforts have made available the following resources on the Internet: General Accounting Office publications such as Health Care Reform report The US Department of Health and Human Services Health and Human Services issues The Scientist biweekly tabloid newspaper.1990 Census data A University of Michigan archive site for public-domain Macintosh programs related to the health sciences A University of California archive site for public domain software dealing with medical education on both the Macintosh and MS-DOS.Recommended cancer treatment guidelines from the National Cancer Institute's Physician Data Query Access to the federal Food and Drug Administration's database Files on diagnostic criteria in surgical pathology at an Internet site in Australia. This list of resources is only a small sample of the information available on the Internet. World Wide Web Although the combination of FTP and Gopher Internet services provide the ability to easily navigate and retrieve files on the Internet, the World Wide Web (WWW) hypermedia document standard, developed by the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in conjunction with such client WWW browsers as Netscape or Mosaic, has produced a globally distributed hypermedia information service that is easy to use and addictive for those hungry for information and data. The WWW hypermedia document standard is analogous to HyperCard programs on the Macintosh. WWW files contain text, images, sound, or video elements, as well as embedded links that one can use to access other documents. In contrast to HyperCard, the WWW files are distributed globally on the millions of computers that are part of the Internet. To access the WWW hypermedia files, the WWW browser software provides a graphic interface that is user-friendly and supported on multiple platforms including IBM-compatible personal computers and Macintoshes. The ready o 0 PATHOLOGY AND RESOURCES ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB Oc World Wide Web Site Universal Resource Locator (URL) WebPath utah. edu/webpath/webpath.html#organ2 UPMC Pathology Case Database Armed Forces Institute of Pathology Medical Matrix American Society of Clinical Pathologists College of American Pathologists Oncolink National Library of Medicine directory service ges/index.html Newsgroup listings Laboratory Homepage VOLUME 28, NUMBER 1.: o

4 ' PREMIER SITES HANDBOOK Yours Wttt W(frr*fw<M o Jlll!>j (MIL1 Mill,! GUIDE TO INTERNET C U N I C A L MEDICINE RESOURCES selected, ranked, peer-remwed. annotated contnuous/y updated. Uf-textpatient care resources MEDICAL NEWS MEDLINE NEW ITEMS GUESTB JOURNALS, OFFER URL R, ASSIST [ Search Medical Matrix ]( Clear ) Specialty uul Disease Categorized Information (2,212 entries) Addiction & Substance Abuse (5) AJfiS(51> Allergy (27) Anesthesiology (66) Bariatrics (5) Cardiology (148) Cardiovascular Surgery (20) Critical Care (15) Dermatology (59) Emergency Medicine (36) Endocrinology (58) Environmental Medicine (13) EUtics (9) Family Medicine (35) Gastroenterology (83) Genetics (8) Geriatrics (16) Gynecology (65) Hematology (136) Immunology (17) Infections Discuses (88) Internal Medicine (17) Metabolic Disease Medicine (11) Nephrology (42) Neurology (121) Neurosurgery (32) Nuclear Medicine (14) Obstetrics (26) Occupational Medicine (13) Oncology(141) Ophthalmology (55) Orthopedics * Rehabilitation (57) Otolaryngology (45) Pathology (53) Pediatrics (96) Prevention Medicine (20) Public Health (18) psychiatry (68) Pulmonology(63) Radiation Oncology (2) Radiology(240) Rheumatology (65) Signs * Symptoms (22) Snorts Medicine (13) Surgery (60) Toxicology (26) Transplant Medicine (3) Trauma Medicine (13) Travel Medicine (8) Urology (49) Supplemental Lists (683 entries) Basic Medical Sciences (116) Pharmacotherapeutics (55) Medical Matrix page. By clicking on an underlined word, users can move to another page or series of pages on the subject. Software Databanks (8) Telemedicine. Imaging. and availability of WWW hypermedia document standard and WWW browsers has led to an explosion in the number of hypermedia publications on the Internet. The Library of Congress has several hypermedia "exhibits" on-line, including the Soviet Archive Exhibit, the 1492 Exhibit, and the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit. The National Library of Medicine also has a History of Medicine exhibit accessible from the Internet. An example of what one can see with a WWW browser is displayed in the Figure. A document titled "Medical Matrix," which is available on the WWW, is shown. The document contains underlined phrases that provide links to other documents. By placing the mouse pointer over the link and clicking the mouse button, the user causes the WWW browser to retrieve and display the linked document. The "Medical Matrix" offers many useful links to a variety of documents on the WWW, including links to resources on medical software, on-line medical multimedia VOLUME 28, NUMBER 1 Downloaded4 6from textbooks or case studies, electronic medical journals, laboratory vendors, free Medline searches, and numerous other resources. The best way to understand the power of this emerging era of distributed linked documents is to get on the Internet and use a WWW browser. To assist you on your tour of the Internet, the Table lists several medically relevant sites that you can use to begin your exploration. The second column has the address otherwise known as the universal resource locator, or URL of the document that you need to enter into the appropriate input field of the WWW browser that you are using. How To Access the Internet One may access the Internet through a variety of routes. Universities and large commercial institutions often are connected to the Internet, and employees or students may ask for accounts. Internet access providers charge users a small monthly fee to allow them to use phone lines equipped with high-speed modems to connect to the Internet. The large on-line commercial services, such as Prodigy, America Online, and CompuServe, also provide access to the WWW. Conclusion An immense variety of information is available at your fingertips when surfing the World Wide Web. The Internet is providing greater opportunities than ever before for laboratorians to share information with one another, through such modes as electronic mail, mailing lists, and electronic conferencing. By signing up with an Internet provider and trying out the technology, you can experience firsthand the potential of this interactive digital medium. Additional Readings Kehoe BP. Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner's Guide. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, N): Prentice-Hall; Krol E. The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog. 2nd ed. Sebastapol, Calif: O'Reilly and Associates LaQuey T. The Internet Companion Plus: A Beginner's Startup Kit for Global Networking/Book and Disc. 2nd ed. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley; 1994.

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