Some Reflections on Medical Diagnosis by Electronic Data Processing Machines

The Vanderbilt University School of Medicine study of the feasibility of electronic data processing in medical diagnosis emphasizes a coordinated engineering and medical scientific effort. All needed technical modalities exist. Decisions have to be made about obtaining and encoding input patient information, size of memory, nature of access, the organization of data stored in it, the arithmetic of comparison, the format of a useful output. Diagnosis of health is a worthwhile long-term objective. Government services, large industries, and major medical centers are primary sites. Administrative, personnel and financing problems are difficult but not insurmountable.