A NEURORADIOLOGIST IN IOWA STUDies the swirling contours of his patient's cat scan and immediately books the man for surgery. An Atlanta cardiologist, glancing at an untouched bottle of heart pills, looks his patient in the eye and urges him to take his medicine. A psychiatrist notes the pallor on the face of an earthquake survivor in Armenia and counsels her on post-traumatic- stress disorder.
Typical encounters between doctor and patient? Perhaps. But in each case the doctor and the patient are not seated knee to knee in an examining room: they are hundreds -- in one case thousands -- of...