A guide to Mosaic and the World Wide Web for physicians

Abstract

Although the predecessor of the Internet as we know it has existed since 1969, few physicians have taken full advantage of its extensive and continuously expanding resources. This may be due in part to the perceived difficulty of navigating the sometimes circuitous routes to the data sources of interest. Newer and substantially more user-friendly interfaces have been developed recently, allowing simpler and more direct access to the full range of Internet resources. Arguably the most important of these is the National Center for Supercomputing Application's Mosaic, the link to an information domain known as the World Wide Web. This article provides an overview of the important medical resources that Mosaic offers the clinician, teacher, and researcher, together with information on how to obtain and configure the software.