The precursor to I2P E-Magazine, Computachem E-Newsletter, was first published in February 2000.
From very humble beginnings, and with only one writer, it has now grown (at the end of 2001), to a production covering almost every aspect of pharmacy in all its dimensions.
Writers have grown in number from one to seventeen.
It now has the status of a magazine, and is upgraded and re-launched as such.
Subscribers have also grown apace.
We were the first organisation in pharmacy to attempt to publish in the new Internet medium, and at the time of launching the first edition of I2P, we are still the only offering.
However, before reinventing ourselves, we undertook a survey of our readers, to ensure that what we produced, was basically what our readers wanted.
Our new name reflects the fact that our readers overwhelmingly wanted to read and understand Information Technology (IT), in all its forms and applications.
The "buzz words" B2B and B2C are shortcut titles illustrating "Business to Business" and "Business to Consumer" aspects of Information Technology.
We now have I2P, "Information to Pharmacists" as our masthead, reflecting that we are now fully integrated into the new technologies.
While the new magazine will have a strong IT flavour, it will still cover a diverse range of topics (you can check our list) to satisfy all tastes.
We welcome any input from our readership, and if you would like a specific topic researched, and presented in I2P, we are happy to do so on request.

Our upgrade includes a number of tools for interaction:

* We have a system to e-mail an article to yourself or a colleague.
* We have a powerful search engine to search for keywords in the newsletter and the magazine.
* We have polls to sample current opinion on any topical matter.
* We have developed printer friendly technology so that you can print out in hard copy, any article in which you are interested.
* We have simplified our site navigation to ensure you can find all the information on our now relatively large site.
* We have a new and more simplified forum so that debates can be started around any article or current topic bearing on the practice of pharmacy.
* And in a real first, we are developing "supplements" which will deliver an organised body of information about selected subjects, which you will be able to download or e-mail to colleagues.
The supplements will have the look and feel of a book, with pages being able to be "flipped" over, just like a hard copy publication.
And you will be able to store them on your desktop, just as you would books in a library.

Because our articles will be longer, reflecting the additional research that will be invested to improve the quality of our product, we are publishing once a month, instead of twice a month, as we did for the newsletter.
This is also in line with our reader's wishes.

Pharmacists have not yet embraced IT as wholeheartedly as they might have.
This only because a lot of understanding that has to occur, before the new technologies can be embraced.
Pharmacists have also been inundated with extra activities, mainly inflicted from government sources, and their ability to cope with change has been impaired over the past two years.
While the extra workloads will not necessarily go away (in fact, they are liable to increase!) solutions have to be found to control the mountainous workloads, so that you can "get your weekends back", as Patrick Gallagher, one of our IT writers, so succinctly put it in a 2001 article.
The longer pharmacists delay embracing IT in all of its forms, the more out of control and disorganised they will become, with no possibility of developing interesting work through new clinical services.
There will be no time!
Nor will they generate an adequate amount and spread of income, because they will not have the ability to diversify their businesses in a quick and timely manner.

IT in a sense, is a beacon that holds out the promise of a new beginning, and for those who master it, well, they will rise to the top quite rapidly.
At I2P we are dedicated to publishing all the information necessary to manage and understand the changes evolving around us, and give perspective and structure to them.
Our writers hold strong personal opinions about their subjects and offer them with potential solutions.
All are pharmacists, or people closely associated with pharmacy.
They are the first to realise that they will not have the complete answer for every problem, but they are prepared to speak out, and enter into a debate with any reader who wants to become part of this unique online community.

We hope you enjoy our new offerings for 2002 and beyond, and that we can be a vital component of the re-engineering that is occurring in a pharmacy very close to you.

Neil Johnston,
Editor,
February 2002