Sometimes it seems that the hospital is the health system. Whether in popular culture, such as the American television series ER, in political and popular discourse, with its focus on opening and closing of hospitals, in statistical databases that give prominence to numbers of hospital beds, or in budgetary breakdowns, showing that the bulk of health service spending is concentrated in hospitals, it is clear that the hospital is seen as being at the heart of the health system (McKee & Healy, 2002). Even when the many other components of the health system are recognized, the hospital typically sits at the top of the pyramid. This is perhaps inevitable. Hospitals are highly visible. They are large buildings, well signposted, and adorned with the symbols of health care, such as red crosses. When politicians wish to make a statement on health services, they typically find a convenient hospital as a backdrop. Hospitals are also important for the public, not just when they are ill, but by providing reassurance that they will be cared for nearby if they become ill in the future. They play other roles too, as settings for the education of the next generation of health workers and through their contribution to the local economy. So even though they are only one part of the overall health system, they are an important part, and are recognized as such by almost everyone.

Almost every aspect of society today has been shaped by technological developments. Take the nature of the modern state. The historian Philip Bobbitt describes how the introduction of gunpowder to Europe rendered the medieval city states, protected by high walls, obsolete. Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, allowing for the cheap distribution of information to the masses, paved the way for the Reformation and later for revolutions. The discovery of magnetism, and thus the compass, made it possible to establish global networks, enabling exchange of people and ideas and, ultimately, the system of international trade that prevails today. The invention of the steam engine, powering both railways and mines, paved the way for the industrial revolution and, with it, the growth of major cities. These examples illustrate how technological advances have created huge societal changes that rippled out into further cycles of innovation, driving the shift from local feudalism to a global post-industrial society.

Emergency medicine specializes in acute illness and injury (Edwards, 1996; Tang et al., 2010). It has developed from the realization that these conditions can occur at any time and that dealing with many of these events within more traditional medical specialties led to suboptimal care. Recently the increasing relevance of time-critical interventions such as those associated with complex trauma care, stroke thrombolysis and sepsis therapies have further underlined the importance of a clinically broad but temporally focused specialty. The provision of emergency care is therefore a key function of most major hospitals.