Robert Kiley
The royal Society of Medicine
Press Limited, 2000, £8.50
ISBN 1 85315 370 2

Information technology is becoming more dominant in the working lives of doctors and more so medical students. Overwhelmed by a plethora of information on the internet, those working in the medical field would certainly encounter an uphill battle to keep themselves abreast with changes in medical knowledge, to apply the best information into practice, and to respond to questions from the patients or the lay public.

With this in mind, Kiley has compiled a handbook featuring simple and practical advice on surfing the internet for medical information. This book would benefit both expert and novice. Despite the book's title, medical students stand to benefit more with guidance to the relevant sections on the internet which will be handy for their course and future career.

The author emphasises the importance of sieving valuable medical information in a systematic fashion. A thorough search may entail a tedious trawl through various search facilities. To overcome information fatigue syndrome the author recommends subscribing to credible electronic newsletters in order to be kept updated on new discoveries or policies in health care.

The advent of the internet marks the gradual extinction of library based medical databases like Index Medicus. Internet based databases are discussed and differentiated at length. Despite our familiarity with Medline database, Kiley highlights two other important databases: Embase, with a greater European and Asian coverage, and Cochrane Library, with a greater emphasis on meta­analysed studies. This illustrates the author's principle that no search is comprehensive without resorting to the use of a range of search services.

The rest of the book adopts the same format of discussing the practicality of various skills with links to relevant websites, including the legitimacy of patient information on the web and where to find medical education. One theme predominates in this handbook—evidence based medicine. For example, internet surfers are tutored on how to join discussion forums and contrib­ ute productively, as one way of enhancing clinical knowledge. To ensure the highest quality of information, the author features several evidence based medicine websites and also points out which online journals are free and are credible by evaluating their impact factor. Information not easily obtainable on paper from libraries, such as statistics, is pointed out and the availability of more up to date statistics resources on internet is revealed.

Medicine aside, the author concludes with a selection of websites, ranging from Clipart, Trainline to Voyeurism, that are equally important in spicing up the busy lives of medics.

What I find inferior about this book is that there was no appraisal on various internet portals for medics and the use of clinical guidelines on the net. In addition, the websites illustrated—though common and popular—may not be representative of the topic discussed and may misinform naive readers that those not mentioned are not reliable. Nevertheless, this book, featuring concise and comprehensive information on medical information technology, is undoubtedly good value for money. Its prolific author also adds to the appeal of this book. Although basic computer knowledge is assumed, jargons are thankfully kept to a minimum.