[New architectures destined for hospital computer networks opening the medical world to more communication facilities of every kind].

It is sound medical education discipline to ask for a review of the literature, patient to patient, before setting up any global appraisal or clinical judgement. Next it appears legitimate to conduct similar searches with a local or institutional data base management system to find similar local patients to be compared with those of the literature. Both actions need communication facilities to be rooted in the patient ward unit. It is shown how well the new workstations are suited to these communication expectancies, with an appropriate capability of providing a user-friendly human interface, international bibliographical research (such as MEDLINE), a remote computer assisted learning programme library, image manipulation and local medical records handling. It is also emphasized that the expectancies related to UMLS (Unified Medical Language System of the National Library of Medicine in Washington DC) or to telemedicine are closely dependent on the availability of the high networking performances now available.