Last week I just finished reading the
sequel to the best seller: Freakonomics.  It is named, Super
Freakonomics, the title is literally the only disappointing thing
about it.  One part of the book especially struck me.  It
was about an early loinc mapping service that a hospital used to collect, organize and
distribute data about patients within a hospital.  It was really
mind blowing.  First they explained how surgeons discovered hand
washing as a way to keep their victims\patients from dying after a
surgery. After explaining how this one small step had a massive
positive impact on patient care they drew some interesting parallels
to the new computer system.

If you haven’t read that book yet,
by all means pick it up it’s a fantastic read.  I will do my
best to convey the idea.  One of the most disorganized emergency
rooms in the country received a cool gift in the form of a new
computer system. It gave doctors and nurses access to insane amounts
of data about their patients at one of several terminals throughout a
hospital.  The result was immediate.  Patients received
better care.

Deviously, to launch the system, the hospital
administrator simply set up the computer and labeled it as something
that the doctors were not to use.  This reverse psychology was
of course very effective and within a short time there was a line of
people waiting to use the computer.  It had access to records,
tests, data. All this information being constantly updated for each
patient in the emergency room.

Knowledge is power, trite but
true.  When important knowledge is cataloged, stored, indexed,
filed and available to the people who need it they have the power to
help others.  There are plenty of other examples from the book
that bear out this same point.  But something about the life or
death nature of an emergency room makes the point more vividly. 
I think that the free, open, and honest trade of important ideas is
the most fundamental thing we all take for granted.  Before we
had the computer, people walked out to their doorsteps stooped down
and picked up a paper. They believed what it said because they had
no other choice.  Now we all have access to such masses of
information that we take it for granted.