Healthcore's Integrated Research Network (IRN) is the prototype for what will inevitably become a multinational medical database with the capability of generating worldwide outcomes and many other types of clinical data at the click of a mouse. Healthcore uses the patient and client database of its home office, Wellpoint, not only to answer relevant clinical and medical economics questions but to suggest potentially fruitful areas of basic and clinical research to investigators in all of the major medical disciplines. Soon, it will be possible for insurance companies on all five continents to pool their data resources into a worldwide computer network, enabling physicians everywhere to make clinical decisions based on the most current and bias-free information.