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Doctors use some two million pieces of information to manage patients, but little research has been done on the information needs that arise while treating patients

Textbooks, journals, and other existing information tools are not adequate for answering the questions that arise: textbooks are out of date, and “the signal to noise” ratio of journals is too low for them to be useful in daily practice

Computer systems that have been developed to help doctors are not widely used—perhaps because they have not been developed to meet doctors' information needs

When doctors see patients they usually generate at least one question; more questions arise than the doctors seem to recognise

Most of the questions concern treatment

Many of the questions are highly complex, simultaneously asking about individual patients and particular areas of medical knowledge

Often doctors are asking not simply for …