For a while now, experts in information technology have been chiding hospitals to slim down on the paper patient files and prescription slips and get into better digital shape. While many of the individual pieces of equipment in health care are now computerized, capturing data from these devices and storing it in a centralized system, which then allows for an effective transmission of information to the right people at the right time, lag far behind. One reason that hospitals have been slow to adopt such tools is they're expensive to implement, and managing complex medical information is a difficult job.

Now several big players in health care and data management are bringing their expertise and money to bear on the problem. HealthSouth, one of the largest U.S. providers of health-care services, and Oracle, the giant software supplier, are the latest to announce plans to build an "all-digital hospital." The $100 million facility in suburban Birmingham, AL, will include patient beds with information screens connected to a central database, electronic medical records storage, digital imaging of x-ray film and a wireless communications network that will permit doctors and nurses to update and access patients' medical records using handheld devices. Doctors, for example, could access a patient's history at his or her bedside, calling up x-rays taken two years ago or the results of the blood test taken that morning.