Fibre Optics and Dissemination of Information

Abstract

The picture featured on the cover of this issue depicts light being transmitted by fibre optics. Fibre optic technology is used to link computers within local area networks, is the basis of endoscopy, and has virtually replaced copper wire in long-distance telephone lines. Fibre optic cable consists of hair-thin glass fibres (typically 0.125 mm diameter). Currently, the purity of silica glass fibres is such that infrared light in the wavelength ranges of 0.8 to 0.9 m or 1.3 to 1.6 m can travel for 100 km or more without the need for boosting by repeaters. These wavelengths are efficiently generated by lightemitting diodes or semiconductor lasers and suffer the least signal attenuation in glass fibres. As pharmacists, we depend on the efficient transmission and dissemination not of light, but of information. Having accurate, up-to-date information is critical to our work. Ensuring its availability is particularly tough in some instances, most notably for disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, where changes in therapy occur so rapidly that keeping up is often difficult. But keeping up and knowing what is right and true become impossible when information is withheld. The 1990s brought dramatic changes to the pharmaceutical industry, mergers being the most obvious. However, during this period there was also a change in