The digital curriculum vitae

The curriculum vitae (CV) has been the traditional method for radiologists to illustrate their accomplishments in the field of medicine. Despite its presence in medicine as a standard, widely accepted means to describe one's professional career and its use for decades as an accomplice to most applications and interviews, there is relatively little written in the medical literature regarding the CV. Misrepresentation on medical students', residents', and fellows' applications has been reported. Using digital technology, CVs have the potential to be much more than printed words on paper and offers a solution to misrepresentation. Digital CVs may incorporate full-length articles, graphics, presentations, clinical images, and video. Common formats for digital CVs include CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs containing articles (in Adobe Portable Document Format) and presentations (in Microsoft PowerPoint format) accompanying printed CVs, word processing documents with hyperlinks to articles and presentations either locally (on CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs) or remotely (via the Internet), or hypertext markup language documents. Digital CVs afford the ability to provide more information that is readily accessible to those receiving and reviewing them. Articles, presentations, videos, images, and Internet links can be illustrated using standard file formats commonly available to all radiologists. They can be easily updated and distributed on an inexpensive media, such as a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. With the availability of electronic articles, presentations, and information via the Internet, traditional paper CVs may soon be superseded by their electronic successors.