Physicians in the clinical setting remain isolated from important sources of medical information. The authors have created a multimedia database known as The Virtual Hospital that improves access to current medical data, which is used to improve patient care decisions. The Virtual Hospital is a digital health sciences library stored on a server (computer) at the University of lowa and delivered via the Internet to inexpensive personal computers in the workplace. The emerging standard of the World Wide Web is used to provide cross-platform distribution.