Development of a Website for Clinical Microbiology in Brazil

Abstract

The quality of Brazilian health services, including clinical microbiology laboratories, varies enormously. We established a Website to provide different professionals with up-to-date information and to create a virtual Brazilian microbiology community. The Website became operational in February 2000 and had 198,976 hits in the subsequent 20 months. There were 1031 user registrations in its virtual community. Different microbiology topics were discussed and three virtual training courses (representing about 300 printed pages of information) were given. The e-learning centre and the Brazilian virtual community created by this Website have facilitated distance learning, and have encouraged professional integration within Brazilian clinical microbiology.