A big push is on to convert medical records from paper and film to digital records. (See New York Times article, "Smart Care Via a Mouse, but What Will It Cost?" The obvious benefit for us as consumers of healthcare is based on instant access to our medical records by doctors who may be faced with saving our lives, perhaps away from home. The obvious concern is about privacy and security.

What the enthusiasm is really about: not computers and software, but health information in the form of electronic records, stripped of personal identifiers, that can be easily shared, searched, measured and analyzed to determine what treatments and drugs are most effective, and at what cost.

Michael O. Leavitt, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, recently said the rollout of electronic health records was “the most important thing happening in health care.”