[Internet--an introduction].

The internet is an excellent medium for storing and quickly disseminating large amounts of information on a global basis. Modern medicine requires a rapid access to information including clinical data from medical records, bibliographic databases, knowledge bases and nomenclature databases. This is especially true for university hospitals and medical schools for training as well as for fundamental and clinical research for diagnosis and therapeutic purposes. Therefore, the internet with its constantly increasing offers plays a more and more important role in scientific research. This review focuses on how developments of this communication technology have become a useful educational resource in medicine, and describes modest ideas in computer network use. Internet basic resources are electronic mailing (e-mail), discussion groups, file transfer, and browsing the World Wide Web (WWW).