Intensive Care Medicine/preface

This reference text book is an user created, user modified and openly accessibly resource. The aim is to create an open repository of Intensive Care Medicine knowledgebase which could be updated from the user end.

The advantages of such a system over traditional text books are very obvious. For example, this text book gives the users the power to update the content quickly, obviating the need to wait for a new 'edition' of a conventional reference text to be published reflecting the contemporaneous change. Traditional reference texts also are bound by Copyright issues which might restrict the access to information of life-saving, quality-of-life-improving genre for everyone.

There are obvious shortfalls in such a system as Wikibooks. For instance, the book generally stays as a 'work in progress' for ever. And such open textbooks might not be considered an 'authoritarian' reference. The intent of such repositories appears to be to complement and not to replace 'authoritarian' text books. The internationally collaborative nature of this system could help in understanding and incorporating the views of practitioners of Intensive Care Medicine from different countries.

The book could also serve as a silo to deposit copyright-free non-textual clinical content (e.g. illustrations, pictures and videos) which may then be utilized for teaching, training and research purposes.

Any section could be edited in this text book - including this preface.

This text book was initiated with a computer running Open Source Operating system.