FEATURES

18 Health and Biomedical Informatics

COLUMNS

8 Business: The 8th Layer

Sniper Forensics

If you’re really lucky, you’ll get to review a system while it’s still under attack. Lynn Greiner

12 Putting IT Together

All Together Now

Don’t want it public? Don’t put it out there in the first place.

Win Treese

15 Viewpoint

Learn Without the Web

The non-digital research process is an end in itself, though most students don’t buy the rationale.

Mark Bauerlein

Without electronic health records and e-prescription data, even the
most well-intentioned care could miss the mark.
Aaron Weiss

DEPARTMENTS

3 Editorial

Better Data, Better Health?

Do no harm means preventing medical procedures and prescriptions when none is truly warranted.

Andrew Rosenbloom

4 Net News

Trojan Horse Inside?

Could backdoors secretly installed in hardware cause aircraft, missiles, and radars to fail in times of crisis?; no matter which smartphone sells the most, consumers benefit from the competition among Apple, Motorola/Google, and Research In Motion; replacing manuals, augmented-reality displays guide mechanics through the intricacies of engine repair; Dvorak enthusiasts still want respect, and a superior keyboard; crowdsourcing helped Netflix improve the efficiency of its movie-recommendation algorithms; the plagiarism cops know if we’ve copied someone else’s work wholesale or simply pinched a phrase without attribution. Alan Zeichick

Genomic information about our deepest biological selves helps tailor the medical interventions most likely to make and keep us well.

Laurie Rowell

RESOURCES

31

Reviews of The Public Domain by James Boyle; Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely; and Total Recall by Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell Reviewed by Michele Tepper

Tetraktys by Ari Juels
Reviewed by Gregory Conti

Also: Upcoming conferences and essential URLs relating to this issue’s articles and columns.

40 The Last Word

Privacy in the Era of Genomics The flood of genomic data we’re collecting about ourselves could also be used against us. Frank Stajano

On the Cover: Paper-based medical records make it difficult to spot errors and inconsistencies or share information with patients and researchers. Image ©2009 by David Pearson • http://www.pearsonfaces.com