Although executives and physicians at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston have had reason to take great pride in their advanced clinical computing system, they recently had a wake-up call when the system suffered a full-scale failure. Before the crash, the medical center's information-systems staff had designed and implemented a variety of applications to aid clinicians in caring for patients. With this system, clinicians throughout the medical center and the six affiliated CareGroup hospitals can gain access to laboratory results, radiographs, and electrocardiograms electronically, using a secure Internet browser. Patients also have secure access to their test results . . .