University hospital Medical Information Network (UMIN), Japan, was established in 1989 to share common database and application software among national university hospitals in Japan. Thanks to its successful management and successive funding from the government, UMIN has evolved into one of the largest and most versatile public academic network organizations in the world and indispensable information infrastructure for the Japanese medical academic community. Currently, the number of its registered medical professionals and its web page views per month is about 153,000 and 15,000,000, respectively. I believe that similar public information centers for academic activities would be also beneficial for other academic specialties in other countries.