RSS feeds: what are they and why should I care?

Really simple syndication (RSS) feeds and aggregators are indispensable tools for clinicians who need to stay abreast of the latest clinical research, public health publications, and economic factors that might affect their practice. RSS enables clinicians with a compatible browser, such as Mozilla Firefox, or other desktop aggregator, to view headlines and journal article titles from dozens or even hundreds of disparate Web sites of their choosing. Instead of wasting time visiting each Web site, dealing with pop-ups and advertising, and parsing new data from old, aggregators provide a single, simple window into the information. Setting up a desktop aggregator to manage and display RSS feeds is straightforward and, thanks to open source applications, imminently affordable.