In Memoriam: Dr. David Crippen
In the 1970s I got to be known in the new field of computers in medicine and was invited to participate in a National Science Foundation (NSF) experiment on how networks of computers could be used in a variety of disciplines. They set me up with a computer terminal at home where I could connect with scientists and researchers around the world. My subgroup was on spinal cord injury, the topic of the lab I worked in, and I had nightly conversations with scientists who eventually became friends. For the time, it was pretty cool. This was in stark contrast to traditional information management back then. I was in medical school at the time and actually had a lecture on how to use a pair of pliers to rip apart articles from the New England Journal of Medicine and file them in your filing cabinet to create your personal archive. The NSF project was short-lived but a book, The Network Nation, documented the project and became a classic.
I had to wait about 20 years for something similar to appear that connected people around a topic the way the NSF experiment did. An intensivist, and quite the Renaissance man, from the University of Pittsburgh, David Crippen, started an email list, called the Critical Care Medicine List (CCM-L), to discuss topics in critical care as well as specific patient issues. I had met David in the 90’s when he gave a lecture demonstrating how you could look anything up on the Internet. This was in the early days of search engines. He showed how cool the internet was by quickly locating information on the Fender Stratocaster, his favorite guitar. This was the first exposure many of us had to the new power of web searches using semantics (searching by sentences instead of a word). Over the years, I got to know David less as a physician but more in his role as a guitar player in The Codes, the informal band that used to play at the Neurocritical Care Society meetings.
Dr. David Crippen in his CCM-L t-shirt
The CCM-L logo
I’ve always been impressed with this list by the self-regulation of those who posted, the honest evaluation of patient management methods, and the questioning of less than stellar research. The discussions were honest, and they had to be, as everyone’s goal for the information was to save lives and promote health… a refreshing break from the dilution of truth we see so often today.
David Crippen passed away this weekend (January 18) of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fast progressing and lethal form of dementia. For those on the list, our inboxes have been filled with CCM-L posts praising David’s vision and thanking him for his gift to the community. The collective minds on the list have certainly saved many lives. The list will continue. A currently out-of-print book celebrating CCM-L is shown on Amazon.
A book on the CCM-L, written by Dr. Crippen.
David’s passing caused me to wonder how a simple email list created with technology from the dawn of the Internet could last for decades, and still be widely used, well into the age of ChatGPT. Technological adoption requires trust; trust requires understanding. We like to use things we understand. CCM-L posts were written by physicians for physicians with some of the best minds in critical care on the list. It is a highly trusted source. And despite the hype surrounding large language models, they are void of comradery. Until ChatGPT figures out how to create trust and friendships, CCM-L will continue to fill this unique need.
