Evolution of the Web and its Uses in Healthcare

INTRODUCTION Before the Internet, people obtained health information from consulting a healthcare provider, books, magazines and newspapers or simply by asking family and friends. Nowadays, the internet has become a major source of information for those who have access to it. Large numbers of patients rely on the internet as a source for their queries regarding medical information including diagnosis, control, treatment and prognosis of either their own health or relatives and loved ones.

The world wide web is not identical to the internet but it is the most prominent part of it. The “web” is defined as a techno-social system that allows individuals to interact on technological networks, thus improving individual's cognition, communication and cooperation.¹ The revolutionary idea of the web was introduced by Tim Burners Lee. The web and its related technologies have progressed tremendously in the past two decades. Four generations have risen since the launch of the web. The web of cognition was known as “Web 1.0”, which was considered as the first generation and a read-only format of the web. Although revolutionary, it provided limited user interaction especially for commercial businesses to share information with customers. It was basically used to search for information and read it. Second came “Web 2.0” with the ability to read and write. It allowed managing significant crowds with common interests in social interactions as defined by Dale Dougherty in 2004. The semantic web, “Web 3.0”, provided machine-readable content on the web. It is made up of two main platforms,…

ABBREVIATIONS: UDI - Universal Document Identifier, HTML - Hypertext Markup Language, HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol, URI - Universal Resource Identifier, GWT - Google Web Toolkit, RSS - Really Simple Syndication, W3C - World Wide Web consortium, EHR - Electronic Health Record, HIS - Hospital Information System, LIS - Laboratory Information System, PACS - Picture Archive and Communication System