Collaboration using Internet for the development of case-based teaching files: Report of the Computer and Instrumentation Council Internet Focus group

The Internet and particularly the World-Wide-Web is becoming a useful tool for the nuclear medicine community. Methods: The Computer and Instrumentation Council of the Society of Nuclear Medicine convened an Internet Focus group to discuss collaboration using the Internet. The prototype application considered was development of case-based teaching files using the World- Wide-Web. Teaching file cases (clinical history, images, description of findings and discussion) on World-Wide-Web servers at different institutions are integrated using the Internet. The user can navigate from case to case using point-and-click hypertext linking. Results: The initial experience with collaboration has been encouraging. An etiquette to help foster collaboration has been proposed. Development of quality control mechanisms and introduction of peer review were identified as issues needing further work. Conclusion: The World-Wide-Web offers great potential for new forms of collaboration. There is, however, a need to learn how to make best use of this new resource.