What one entrepreneur's rise says about the future of medicine

At the headquarters of Cerner, the world’s largest stand-alone maker of health IT systems, the blood-and-guts realities of medicine meet the ­sterile speed and exactitude of the computer revolution. For 33 years founder and Chief Executive Neal Patterson has preached better health through information, a world in which powerful digital machines right out of Star Trek link hospital bedsides with real-time data on what ails the entire nation, finding patterns, suggesting treatments—and tracking costs. Patterson, 62, has likened the journey to pushing a "500-pound marshmallow up a hill" but now insists that healthcare's moment of digital transformation has arrived.