TODAY, CLINICAL ENGINEERING IS IN THE early phases of what will be a true revolution in health care in the 21st century. We are already experiencing some of the disorienting effects of simultaneous and escalating changes in medical technology, information technology, national health care policy and economics, population demographics, and professional identity. These changes are transforming our 20th-century paradigm of clinical engineering in ways that sometimes seem beyond rational human control. Our medical devices, the scope of our professional practice and skills, our "best" business practices, and our working relationships with other professions are mutating at a rate ...