Haynes R B
Can Fam Physician. 1988 Feb;34:435-40.
The medical literature is too vast for any of us to keep up with. However, new information technology allows us to search the literature from our offices, clinics, and homes, to solve specific patient problems as they arise. The skills required can be self-taught from instruction manuals or acquired through training programs that typically last just a few hours. The equipment needed can be a simple add-on to the office computer or a standard IBM-PC or compatible, plus an inexpensive modem. Several online vendors provide access to medical information at a reasonable price, including MEDLINE, Colleague, Dialog, EMBASE and PaperChase. The author describes the prospects and procedures for personal access to electronic literature services and provides some start-up information for readers who want to enter the "Information Age" themselves.
医学文献浩如烟海，我们任何人都难以跟上其全部内容。然而，新的信息技术使我们能够在办公室、诊所和家中检索文献，以便在出现具体患者问题时加以解决。所需技能可以通过阅读说明书自学，也可以通过通常仅持续几个小时的培训课程获得。所需设备可以是办公室计算机的一个简单附加装置，或者是一台标准的IBM个人计算机或兼容机，再加上一个价格低廉的调制解调器。几家在线供应商以合理的价格提供医学信息访问服务，包括医学索引数据库（MEDLINE）、同行（Colleague）、Dialog、荷兰医学文摘数据库（EMBASE）和文献追踪（PaperChase）。作者描述了个人访问电子文献服务的前景和步骤，并为那些希望自己进入“信息时代”的读者提供了一些初步信息。
