Data Processing Considerations in the Handling of Medical Data

This paper examines the growing interest in data processing of medical data, exploring problems of machine design, problem formulation, and analysis. In addition, it discusses data-processing systems in relation to four basic medical-data-handling problem areas and their relation and interaction with equipment design, and reports that these problem areas are: clinical patient data, basic research, diagnosis, and medical-document retrieval. It also reports that any failure of the computer, at the present time, to provide required information is due to inability to feed it precise instructions on what it should do, and that results of further study will be reflected in improved equipment design. Finally, it concludes that the greatest problem is that of education-the necessity for engineers to understand medical problems better in order to design better equipment, and the necessity for the physician to know about the techniques and equipment of data processing.