Research is unthinkable without access to scientific literature. The Ptolemy Project attempts to bridge the gap between the literature available to researchers in wealthy developed countries and that available to researchers in developing countries, where researchers are largely deprived of access to essential health information. The project's aim is to improve access for developing country researchers to peer-reviewed medical literature, as well as to journals and documents originating in their part of the world. The Ptolemy Project is an electronic health information access tool designed to be effective, to be easy to use, and to satisfy the need for health information of surgeons in the developing world (K. Burton, A. Howard, M. Beveridge, unpublished data).
Health has improved in developing countries more rapidly over the last half century than it did in Western countries from the 17th century onwards [
2]. The chief reason has been advances in technology and not, as many believe, improvement in income or education [
2]. Technological advances take many forms: examples include vaccines against childhood diseases, effective short-term treatment of tuberculosis, and better information on the risks and control of diseases such as HIV/ AIDS and tobacco-related illnesses. None of the advances would have been possible without high-quality scientific research. Yet despite the promise of knowledge to reduce premature mortality and poverty, only 10% of the world's health research resources go towards the 90% of diseases that burden the poorest countries [
3].
Making any serious improvement in mortality, morbidity, and disability among the global poor will require more locally driven collaborative research and wider usage of the scientific literature [
4]. The fundamental idea underlying Ptolemy is that it is African doctors and researchers who know the right questions to ask in order to discover practicable solutions to the health problems of their regions. While Ptolemy alone is not sufficient to build a surgical research community, the electronic health information it provides is a fundamental and necessary component to this transformation.
Research capacity is lacking in the developing world, particularly in East Africa, making it vital that up-to-date research information is available to practicing physicians as a means to stimulate locally based and collaborative research. The need for the application of research information and the stimulation of research programs in East Africa is exemplified by the fact that a total of 400 surgeons are responsible for providing care to more than 200 million people. Isolation, burden of practice, and lack of research training and funding are the most common reasons for the dearth of research, and access by surgeons to contemporary scientific literature can help [
5].
All of these problems bring dissatisfaction to doctors, and also to patients, who often travel days to reach medical care facilities only to be placed on a wait list. For example, in Ethiopia the waiting list for elective paediatric surgery/neurosurgery is as long as 8–10 months, and for other elective general surgery disciplines the waiting list is 6–8 months, irrespective of the disease pathology. The situation is similar in the other East African countries. Lack of resources makes surgical practice, surgical education, and research difficult in Africa [
1].