Economist - IT in the health-care industry:
"'WHETHER or not a treating doctor has Alex's full medical record available can literally mean life or death,' says Cynthia Solomon of Sonoma, California. Her son Alex, now in his 20s, grew up with hydrocephalus, a rare and life-threatening condition in which fluid accumulates in the brain and needs to be drained through special shunts. So Ms Solomon had no choice but to become a walking filing cabinet of records on allergies, pituitary-gland problems, brain scans and “every piece of paper a doctor ever wrote about Alex's case.” She worried constantly. There were close calls, such as the time that Alex went on a trip and ended up, unconscious, in some distant hospital. Ms Solomon could not get his paper records to the new doctor and had to pray that Alex would not get the wrong antibiotics or be laid on his back, which might have killed him."
