I recently read Thomas L. Friedman's best-selling book, The World is Flat. What Friedman, a New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist, refers to is the realization that global internet access has changed the world forever. As broadband internet connections have become available throughout the globe, all roadblocks to international competition are being removed. Geographic barriers are coming down. Depending upon your point of view this is either good or bad. We can see this in our local hospital where at night CT scans are read by Board Certified Radiologists in Australia who receive the digitized files in seconds over the internet. Their typed reports are available before patients even leave the Emergency Department.

In a small way, this globalization of information can also be seen in our humble office newsletter. We now have over 6000 individuals who receive our free e-newsletter via email. Most, of course, are patients in our local Gastoenterology practice who have provided us with their email addresses. But, each month I am amazed how more and more individuals from all over the world are downloading and reading our office newsletter. It makes the world seem so much smaller...

Here are locations of some of our recent non-US subscribers:

Australia	New Zealand	Philippines	Slovakia	London	Denmark	Puerto Rico
Malaysia	Hong Kong	Tokyo	Rome	Switzerland	Sweden	Costa Rica
Beijing	New Dehli	Kuwait	Paris	Belgium	Brazil	El Salvador
Iran	Athens	Tripoli	Spain	Ireland	Chile	Mexico City