ONCOLINK - A CANCER INFORMATION RESOURCE FOR GYNECOLOGIC ONCOLOGISTS AND THE PUBLIC ON THE INTERNET

The Internet is a computer network accessible to over 30 million compu ter users worldwide. By default, it has become the ''information super highway'' that is growing at an explosive rate of between 1 and 2 mill ion new users per month. Internet contains thousands of information se rvers covering a bewildering array of topics. Many provide information of interest to cancer patients and healthcare professionals. Identify ing the outstanding ''golden'' resources from the chaos is difficult. To address this problem and to provide information specific to gynecol ogic oncology, we developed a cancer information server called ''OncoL ink'' at our institution that is available at no cost 24 hr per day, 7 days per week to all Internet users. OncoLink has two major goals: (1 ) To provide quality, original content for cancer patients and healthc are professionals and (2) to provide well-organized, consistent access to existing Internet cancer resources, This service may be used by an yone with a Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, or UNIX computer. The service is rich in multimedia content containing text, pictures, illus trations, sound, and video. The information includes (1) original cont ent written by authors at our institution, (2) original content submit ted by authors from other institutions and, (3) publicly available inf ormation from other resources. Patient-oriented articles, physician-or iented review articles, and NIH, NCI, and FDA documents are available, All content is reviewed by an Editorial Board prior to posting, We ha ve kept a detailed log file of each time the system has been accessed by an Internet user, OncoLink went online in March 1994, During the fi rst 18 months (542 days) of operation, the service received 4,051,901 requests for information from 105,589 unique Internet addresses worldw ide. There is tremendous public and professional demand for online can cer information via the Internet. We feel that the Internet is an outs tanding vehicle for providing quality cancer information for gynecolog ic oncologists other healthcare professionals, and the public (C) 1996 Academic Press Inc.