Developments in electronic access to biomedical information: a database producer's view

In the past, the convergence and simultaneous appearance of technological innovation and change has brought about the means and the methods for accessing biomedical information online. The situation has not changed but the means and the methods are themselves beginning to undergo innovation and change, mainly as a result of technological progress but also, most importantly, as a result of changing patterns of usage and new user groups. This paper will discuss various emerging technologies as the basis which will determine how biomedical data in electronic format, such as that held in the EMBASE database, could be accessed in the future. From the point of view of the database producer, the questions on this topic which have to be answered are, in order of importance: given an ideal world, what is the user wish‐list?; what are the new technologies and how do they affect our current products?; and, using this new technology, how can we make products which will meet the user wish‐list? It will be seen that the results of applying technological development to online access to biomedical data, or any other type of bibliographic data for that matter, will be transparent to the user, and that online searching for the end‐user will become easier than we could ever have imagined. What I will say is not an announcement of where EMBASE is heading over the next decade, but some speculation in the most general terms of where any bibliographic database could develop in this period Much depends on the simultaneous arrival on the information scene of mutually‐compatible technologies. Much also depends on the desires and preferences of the customers, for as much as they may malign us at times it is true that they are at the heart of our business.