The medicine-compatible computer: A challenge for medical informatics

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
When computers were initially installed into the medical environment, it was accepted that the medical input data must be disciplined extensively to make them computer-compatible. Numerous classifying and coding decisions had to be made before a keypunch operator could transfer medical ideas on to the 80-column punch card. During the next two decades, it became increasingly apparent that there is a barrier between human communication conducted in natural language, and the machine's unnatural language [1]. This barrier persists as a major stumbling block to the exploitation of the vast potential of the computer in medicine. As the field of clinical computing matures, the construction of a medical man-machine interface has become a difficult but not impossible challenge. The interface must eliminate the barrier between two languages so that information can flow freely between the physician and his machine. This paper describes the approach we have taken for the development of a medical interface which makes the computer ‘medicine-compatible’.