Editorial: Massage the Medium: Global Theme Issue

The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine is pleased to participate in the third global theme issue, The Impact of New Technologies in Medicine. The theme was selected after a multiple stage Delphi process involving 100 medical journal editors around the world. First, participants were asked to suggest subjects to be addressed in 1999. Editors voted on the proposals, and then again on the top themes. The idea of publishing a global theme issue has been coordinated once again by a group of prominent medical science physician-editors including Richard M. Glass and David H. Mark of JAMA, Michael Wiles and Miriam Shuchman of the Western Journal of Medicine, John Hoey of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Liselotte Hojgaard of Ugeskrift for Laeger (Journal of the Danish Medical Association), Richard Horton of The Lancet, Magne Nylenna of Tidsskrift for Den norske laegeforening (Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association), John A. Overbeke of Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde (Dutch Journal of Medicine), and Richard Smith of the British Medical Journal. It is fitting that the transition between millenniums for medicine should be accompanied by a focus on both technology and a global theme. The title of this editorial is a homage to Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), Professor English at the University of Toronto. McLuhan coined the term “global village” [1] and stressed that this century ushered in the end of the age of print and the beginning of the electronic age. The focus of the International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine is to address the complex relationships among the biological, psychological, and social systems in the world of primary care. At first thought, this focus might seem antithetical to the use of technology or the electronic age and to result in a negative view of the impact of technology in medicine. In the early years of the