MedWebmasters Bruce T. Smith August 18, 2000 |
MEDWEBMASTERS-L Discussion of cyberMedicine.org Date:Fri,
18 Aug 2000 07:42:02 -0700 Greetings, New to list. I am a renal dietitian who has had some experience in developing websites, primarily for university departments and grant projects. My strengths (such as they are) are in information management and display, rather than programming and engineering. I am new to the list and, after perusing the archives, look forward to future postings. My thoughts were prompted by the cyber-medicine site recently announced by Kim Solez. As medicine and science learn and understand more about the human body at its most basic levels, ie: atomic and molecular, and come to approach the body as a whole organism (eg, recent acceptance of the mind-body connection), the current divisions of medical fields will begin to blur and overlap. Eventually, I suspect that the traditional divisions of medicine will be redesigned to accommodate the advances in knowledge. Since medicine is necessarily conservative, these changes will be gradual and not without resistance. None the less, tools such as nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, bioengineering and the like will provide an increasing amount of medical knowledge that will encompass many areas of current classification (viz. organ systems). As a result, interdisciplinary communication will become the standard, rather than the exception. The cyber-medicine site's goal of "cross-fertilization" is a start, albeit using current knowledge. How might a schema (for Internet research purposes) be developed to facilitate the sharing of new technological developments across disciplines? Is one needed? I would be interested in others thoughts on this topic. Thanks, Bruce T. Smith, M.S., R.D. |