Internet medical consultant — A knowledge-sharing system

Medicine is a very complex science organized in a variety of disciplines. It is very difficult for a medical professional to rely only on his knowledge gained through school and practice. Aside of already known PDA medical assistants, intra-hospital consultations, web-forums, etc., our goal is to leverage the power of modern ICT to provide a system dedicated especially to doctors, for the purpose of knowledge sharing. The system simulates the following ideal scenario: All doctors and all patients in the world are in the same room, with all the logistics they need at hand. To achieve this goal our system consists of an efficient IR subsystem for fetching the desired information as quickly as possible with great relevance, a precise expert locator to find the appropriate expert to address the question, and synchronous communication system that provides remote collaboration.