Sponsored by the Society for Epldemiologic Research REVIEWS AND COMMENTARY Bringing Epidemiology Manuals and Books onto the Internet

Transmission of knowledge in the scientific era has relied and still is relying heavily on the manuscript format, in which journals and books are the depository of past and present knowledge. Epidemiology has not escaped this tradition. A transformation of the infor-mation exchange toward an electronic, interactive, and real-time format through the Internet is rapidly occur-ring. Still, in the area of epidemiology, the power of the World Wide Web (WWW) is untapped. An oppor-tunity is emerging that can revolutionize the way in which knowledge of epidemiology is shared, breaking away from the current limitations of the printed for-mat. This paper discusses some of the limitations of epidemiology manuals and proposes an Internet-based format to share knowledge that could be developed on the global health networ