One side wall of the room can be converted into a giant display panel at the touch of a palm. The house officer presses her palm against the wall and the display panel comes to life, showing all recent laboratory data, including x-rays, MRI scans and sound wave tests done within the past 24 hours. All are digitized, and contrast can be adjusted with the twist of a knob. In fact everything about this patient that, in the 20th century, was printed on paper, is now retrievable easily and fast on any of a dozen flat panel screens situated throughout the ward, as well as in each patient's room. There are no paper records to search through, no x-ray films to find, no labs to call.
All data are available through simple oral commands, or by touching a screen menu.
Because of developments in storage technology and built-in computer redundancy, there is little danger of data loss. Every 12 hours a permanent record of the patient's data is engraved onto a tiny chip which cannot be erased, and can be read by any personal, hand held scanner. The capacity of each chip is enormous, equal to the amount of data that would be generated after 10,000 hospital days. On discharge the patient is given one copy of the final chip, and another is deposited in the hospital's patient record vault. The patient has an intravenous line in his right arm.