MEDICAL INFORMATICS |
The first volume of the Index Medicus contained about 17,000 citations from 700 periodicals. Today, the monthly volume of the Index Medicus contains about 21,000 citations from about 3,000 journals and publications. It is said that the amount of medical knowledge accumulated for the past 2 decades even exceeds the amount accumulated for the previous years since the practice of medicine began. Because of the knowledge explosion in medicine, a physician needs to read about 17 articles a day to keep abreast with current medical knowledge. It has become virtually impossible to commit to human memory the amount of knowledge that has been accumulated through the decades.