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.

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