Advances in information technology. Implications for medical education.

Few kinds of technology have had as broad an impact on the recent affairs of humanity as have information technologies. The appearance and rapid spread in the past several years of innovations such as the Internet's World Wide Web and the emergence of computer networks connecting tens to hundreds of millions of people worldwide have occurred with startling rapidity. These global events portend substantial changes in the delivery of health care, the conduct of biomedical research, and the undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education of health professionals.