supercomputers, high-performance computing equipment capable of handling massive amounts of research and clinical data at speeds more than 1000 times that of most computer equipment. Supercomputer hardware and software may offer a potential of connecting thousands of research facilities and transmitting data at rates up to one billion bits per second. Proposed high-performance computers could quickly analyze archived medical data about worldwide populations, determining, for example, the “normal” human blood pressure on the basis of records of millions of patients.
