Every year, hundreds of hospitals are named to various best-in-the-nation lists. Each list comes with its own set of qualifiers. HeathGrades and Thomson Reuters, for example, each place a lot of emphasis on mortality and complication rates in compiling their top 50 and 100 lists, respectively.

HealthGrades boasts that had all U.S. hospitals followed the lead of the facilities on its list, 165,000 lives would have been saved among Medicare patients, alone. Thomson Reuters makes a similar claim, with its number adjusted to 98,000 overall patients. U.S. News & World Report's list of best U.S. hospitals--probably the most well-known of the best-in-the-nation lists--evaluates hospitals based on 16 different specialties, then creates an "Honor Roll" list of 14 hospitals based on the sum of those specialty rankings.

Here at Fierce, we wanted to recognize hospitals that are not only considered among the best, according to several ranking organizations, but also are considered to be technologically innovative. In determining which hospitals were most "innovative," we took two things into consideration:

• The hospital had to appear on at least one of the three previously mentioned lists; and
• The organization had to appear on either the "Most Wired" and/or "Most Wireless" hospitals lists compiled by Hospitals & Health Networks Magazine.

We then used our own judgment to narrow the remaining hospitals to the 10 mentioned below. To learn more about each of these facilities (listed in alphabetical order), click on the any of the links below to get started.

Avera McKenna Hospital & University Health Center

The Christ Hospital

Inova Fairfax Hospital

Lankenau Hospital

Lehigh Valley Hospital

Mayo Clinic: Rochester Methodist Hospital

Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital

Piedmont Fayette Hospital

Rush University Medical Center

UC San Diego Medical Center