IT's About Patient Care: Transforming Healthcare Information Technology the Cleveland Clinic Way

Chapter5

The Internet of Healthcare

It Only Feels Like Magic

The word technology, particularly in its contemporary sense, is fairly new. Generally thought to have first been used in the mid-1800s, it comes from the Greek technologia, which means the “systematic treatment of an art.”¹ In its early English usage, it only referred to the applied arts (the process of decorating otherwise plainly rendered utilitarian objects),² but its definition gradually changed over time to include a growing range of ideas that all center on tools and machines. Eventually, the concept settled into what we might consider its familiar modern meaning, a “means or activity by which man seeks to change or manipulate his environment.”³ We could probably strip this ...