I love computers and high tech in general, but sometimes I wonder if most computers have a positive cost benefit balance.

I am specifically thinking of the hospital where I work. There are more PCs - and in fact more SERVERS - than there are acute care beds! The IM budget greatly exceeds the Biomed budget, yet if all the PCs and servers suddenly stopped working, nobody would die. If all the Biomed-supported equipment (ventilators, anaesthetic machines, EGC monitors, etc) stopped working, people would be dropping like flies within minutes.

20 years ago there were practically no computers in the hospital, except for a few in the business office, yet there were the same number of beds, the same number of doctors and nurses. Patient flow-through is a bit higher since they send people home as soon as they are able to sit up and have stopped bleeding, practically, but that's another topic - nothing to do with computers.

I realize the business world would grind to a rapid halt without IM/IT/IS whatever you call it working properly, but I think in general computers are vastly over-rated. Much of a self-generating business, like lawyers.

Hmmm - maybe with the number of professional geeks around here, I should have posted thins in Flame...