Endoscopy information online: can endoscopists close the gap between what is known and what they do?

When do you go to the Internet and when do you go to online hosts for information about gastrointestinal endoscopy? This paper describes key concepts such as hosts, online databases such as MEDLINE and EMBASE, search engines, retrieval and query languages, and thesauri. The focus is on two specific thesaurus issues: the use (or absence of) complex hierarchical thesauri such as MEDLINE's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and EMBASE's EMTREE. This allows us to review briefly the great advantages of "term explosion" and automatic mapping of synonyms (and the absence of these facilities on the Internet). The introductory section ends with questions on what your information needs are - clinical information? Product information? Patient information? Research information? The main part of the article is concerned with what is available on the Internet and the host services that are available today and in the future. A light glance (perhaps more of a provocative preview) is cast at future developments relevant to information retrieval in the field of endoscopy. Conclusions include the following: - The Internet should be searched for: guidelines, training, and product information. - There is little published research available for free on the Internet. - For published research, search MEDLINE and EMBASE together, or DIMDI, STN or DataStar (in that order of preference). - Search EMBASE if you need the most recent endoscopy research. - Search EMBASE if you need the most recent drug information relevant in endoscopy - Search MEDLINE if you have no budget. - Search PubMed as the preferred (free) form of access to MEDLINE. - Distrust all Internet information.