The technology hierarchy

The era of the networked society - and medical care depending on networked intelligence - is dawning. Physicians need to plan for office practice information systems in common, with an eye to conveying data electronically between all the locations of care and all the providers involved in caring for defined populations of people. The shared data-base will become the most important asset of the collection of providers who make up the delivery system that creates it. This will be accomplished by layering technology on local and wide-area networks of group practices, hospitals, health plans, and payers and developing standards that make data accessible in the same format to all users, no matter where they are.