David Veillette, chief executive officer of the Indiana Heart Hospital, was shocked to realise he had overlooked something when the hospital he had planned so carefully opened two years ago. Amid all his care over the revolutionary all-digital hospital, he had forgotten rubbish bins. He ran to a home improvement store and bought every bin for the 88-bed, 210,000 sq ft hospital.

The oversight revealed the contempt for paper held by the man who had completed a new, virtually paperless hospital, running on integrated computer systems.