Even a top-notch specialist like Piet de Groen, a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, can't know everything about every illness his patients may suffer. But on the rare occasions that he encounters an ailment he's never seen before, chances are another physician at the hospital has. So de Groen is developing an electronic "data warehouse" that allows him to type in a patient's symptoms and-within seconds-get a list of all similar Mayo patient records. By 2004, after initial data security and patient confidentiality issues have been resolved, de Groen and his colleagues will be able to use these histories to make more accurate diagnoses. In the long term, they could even access your genetic profile to help choose a course of treatment.

The Mayo system is being built with the collaboration of IBM Life Sciences in Rochester and in Yorktown Heights, NY. Started in the winter of 2002, the project has already produced a large database of medical records and software that can find groups of patients with similar conditions and treatments. While hospitals and HMOs are increasingly using electronic records to track patient histories, the Mayo system goes further. It automatically groups patients according to the factors they have in common, allowing doctors to search quickly for combinations of factors. It will be used first for medical research but ultimately to improve patient care. "The application of information technology and bioinformatics is moving toward medicine and patient care much more rapidly than anyone anticipated," says Carol Kovac, general manager of IBM Life Sciences.