INTERNET AND MEDICINE are the promises kept?

Prof.Dr.Ir. Marc Nyssen

We will attempt to analyze the role and impact of the Internet technology on the medical field.

To prepare this analysis, let we will first define what should be understood by "Internet technology", a notion that is usually misunderstood. 

Then we will focus on different fields of scope:

- Medical education
- Research
- Daily practice
- For all of us: patients

and try to find typical examples of Internet applications, relevant to these scopes.

Individual developments, new start-ups and traditional institutions are hit by the side-effects resulting from the growth of the net. Opportunities arise which may lead to drastically new relationships between the interested parties: patients, private and public health care and governments.

Technical, intellectual and political problems remain to be solved, in order to obtain optimal benefits, let us try to identify these and investigate which progress has been made to reach solutions.