Computers in Patient Care

IN most areas of medical care, adaptations in practice have kept pace with advances in knowledge about diseases and therapeutic procedures. However, one vital area of medical practice, information processing, has been badly neglected, and little progress has been made. The technology of data processing in dozens of other fields has been revolutionized by the computer in the last two or three decades. Yet few of these changes have made their way into the medical world — in particular into the hospital. Most information used by hospitals in patient care is written, often in illegible script on multi-part forms. The . . .