Everything from banking to government services, from shopping to gambling has moved on-line in the past decade, yielding huge efficiency gains for suppliers and (for the most part) an improved experience for the customer. Suppliers that have failed to adjust their business model are being slowly (or not slowly) ejected from the marketplace. Against this background, then, it is surprising that such a high percentage of clinical trials are performed using simple pen and paper to record the raw data. The
Obtaining rapid and reliable diagnosis of infectious diseases is usually limited by the sensitivity of the detection technology. Even in severe sepsis, accompanied by organ failure and admission to an intensive care unit, the causative organism is often present at a level of less than one bacterium per milliliter of blood. Similarly, in candidiasis the yeast cells are present at vanishingly low levels in body fluids, while in chlamydia infections the pathogen is located intracellularly as is entirely absent from