When my fourth son, Jason, was born with a severe congenital heart defect, I learned very quickly that medicine is not only about skill or intention, it is about time. Not days or hours, but minutes and seconds. I didn't understand then how deeply the systems around doctors shape those moments. I only knew that our lives now revolved around a children's hospital and a clock we could not slow.
In the early 1980s, my family's world pivoted on the urgent needs of our newborn. Jason was diagnosed with a serious congenital heart defect known as Tetralogy of Fallot. For eight months, we were immersed in Children's Hospital San Diego's pediatric cardiology unit, preparing for what was then considered cutting-edge open-heart surgery. The operation itself corrected Jason's heart structurally, but the aftermath, specifically the volume and complexity of blood transfusions, proved fatal. Before the age of one, Jason died from what should have been a life-saving procedure.
That experience did not just break my heart. It opened my eyes to how deeply systems matter, especially in healthcare. At the time, patient records were filled with paper charts, dictated notes waited for days to be transcribed, and diagnostic data lived in separate silos. The hospital's computer system, built on an early MUMPS architecture, was primarily administrative. Clinical workflow was still analog. There was no integrated, real-time platform connecting physicians to the information they needed when they needed it.
I was not a clinician; I was a technologist. But I had lived inside that system during the most critical months of my son's life. And in the aftermath of his death, I learned that the hospital was issuing a request for proposals to modernize its pediatric cardiology systems. Major vendors were bidding. Yet, from the outset, they approached the problem backwards: hardware first, workflow second. I saw the fractures not in the machines but in the processes that humans navigate to make life-or-death decisions. My bid was strategic, not bigger, but smarter.
We won a contract that, on paper, was modest. What followed was the deployment of one of the earliest Unix-based clinical systems in a U.S. hospital. This was not a laboratory project. It was a production system used daily by the pediatric cardiology team to unify dictation, diagnostic feeds, patient history, and workflow data in a way that mirrored how clinicians actually cared for patients. Instead of fragmented pieces, they now had longitudinal information at their fingertips.
This was not innovation for the sake of novelty; it was innovation with consequence. A system that removed transcription lag, reduced manual delays, and made historical patient data instantly accessible is not abstract in pediatric cardiology; it is foundational. This was more than efficiency; it was continuity of care.
Today, hospitals like Rady Children's Hospital San Diego, where I did this early work, are regarded as national leaders in pediatric cardiology, surgical outcomes, and minimally invasive procedures. They are recognized among the country's top children's hospitals and have decades of experience performing hundreds of cardiovascular surgeries annually while maintaining low risk-adjusted mortality rates.
And technology plays a central role in that progress. Across healthcare, the adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and integrated clinical data systems is now widespread. Effective health IT can reduce medication errors by over a quarter and cut duplicate testing by almost a third, resulting in significant improvements in safety and care coordination. These systems, when thoughtfully designed and deployed, ensure clinicians spend less time wrestling with paperwork and more time making informed decisions that can save lives.
Of course, technology is not a silver bullet. Reviews of health IT implementations remind us that simply installing digital systems does not automatically improve patient outcomes; how these tools integrate with clinical workflows and human processes matters enormously. I know this firsthand, from the frustration of isolated paper charts to the clarity of an integrated clinical platform. Technologies should support caregivers, not obstruct them.
I did not build that early system to replace medicine. I built it to support it, to remove barriers that forced clinicians to rely on memory instead of real-time data, to eliminate the delays where seconds truly count, and to empower care teams with the information they need right when they need it. Jason did not benefit from that work. But countless children have since gone through pediatric cardiology care with systems shaped by that early effort.
This chapter of my life redefined how I see technology and purpose. It taught me that systems must exist to serve people, not the other way around. That automation matters most when the stakes are highest. And that innovation sometimes arises not from ambition but from loss, responsibility, and the refusal to let experience go unused.
Jason never benefited from the system I helped build. That is a truth I will always carry. But other children did, and still do, because someone who had lived inside that moment refused to walk away from what it revealed. Innovation is often described as vision or ambition. Sometimes it is simply grief given direction. And when children's lives are measured in seconds, that direction matters.
About the Author:
Bob Hertz is a technologist whose work in early data processing expanded into data storage and eventually writing software with an emphasis on man-machine interfaces. His clinical information systems helped modernize pediatric cardiology workflows in U.S. hospitals. His career spans more than six decades of innovation across healthcare technology, automation, and systems design, driven by a commitment to ensuring that technology serves people when the stakes are highest.
