Trauma and orthopaedic surgery on the Internet.

The Internet is rapidly expanding as a means of acquiring health information for medical professionals. It is now impossible to identify the total number of websites providing specialist information in trauma and orthopaedic surgery. Webpages may be from a leading expert with excellent documentation and a complete bibliography or merely in the form of encouragement from a friendly online support group. This makes it difficult to determine which information is usable and credible. Strategies for identifying quality academic information for trauma and orthopaedic surgery on the Internet are beginning to evolve. Information overload can be very difficult to cope with and surgeons will need to identify methods to deal with large volumes of material from the Internet. The rate of progress in information technology has been phenomenal and will change the way in which trauma and orthopaedic surgery is practised in the next millennium. The Cold War was the initial stimulus for the development of the Internet which began in 1969 as an initiative of the United States Defence Department to link four American academic institutions. It was designed to put in place a computer system which was accessible across the USA and could survive a nuclear strike, but it was not until 1985 that the National Science Foundation developed the NSFNET (the Internet). It has now become a household appliance because of advances in personal home computing and is, in essence, a vast network of interlinked computers scattered across the world. Many see the future as more of the same with faster computers, better cars, more television channels and better shopping, but developments in information technology (IT) will change life beyond current imagination. Development of Information Technology