The Internet is a relatively new form of electronic communication that has undergone explosive growth within the last 2 years. Unlike commercial on-line services, which are highly structured and often narrowly focused, the Internet by its very nature incorporates a diverse collection of resources and services that have little underlying organization. Because of the ease of obtaining information at publicly accessible computers on the Internet, the amount of information on the Internet is growing rapidly, especially since the introduction of graphic World Wide Web browsers at the end of 1993. As Dr. Dolin points out, finding information on the Internet can be difficult. New search strategies, however, are evolving constantly. As he notes, a good example of this is the Unified medical Language System. Many other search and retrieval methods are also being developed.

Dr. Dolin states that clinically relevant information is not available electronically. However, the reference he quotes [1] shows precisely the opposite. In this study, the efficacy of printed information (textbooks and other printed reference material) was compared with information obtained from Grateful Med databases (AIDSLINE, AIDSDRUGS, AIDSTRIALS, and MEDLINE) in answering clinical questions about patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. The Internet was not used in this study. Ninety-two percent of all questions could be answered using printed sources and the Grateful Med databases. For the questions for which answers could be found, only 13% of the answers could be located in the printed materials compared with at least 87% of answers that could be found through the on-line databases.

It would be misleading to think that the Internet is a substitute for highly focused search programs such as MEDLINE. One of the purposes of my article [2] was to point out the multiple uses of the Internet that transcend locating information in the medical literature. The Internet offers services such as electronic mail, file transfer capabilities, and logging into remote computers that offer many services. Since the publication of my article by Annals, several medical organizations have become accessible through the Internet. Both the American Medical Association (http://www.ama-assn. org) and the Radiologic Society of North America (http://www. rsna.org) can now be accessed through the World Wide Web. The New England Journal of Medicine now allows authors to submit letters and determine the status of manuscripts by E-mail. These are but a few of the many ways in which the Internet can be used; undoubtedly, more will become available in the future.