This project's goal is to develop better ways to let physicians and their associates use computers in health care recordkeeping for research and patient care. The methodology focuses on providing disease-specific and problem-specific protocols and hierarchies of information that allow rapid convergence on relevant diagnoses, treatments, tests, and procedures. In past years, computer programs were developed for the physician to produce pharmacy prescriptions and drug-related patient information using high-speed menu selection methods. Later, new modules to aid in producing diagnostic schedules and treatment reports were developed. All these programs run on a personal computer (PC), and several PC's may be linked together in a Local Area Network for clinics or practices needing more than one workstation. This year, the system was converted to Macintosh hardware to exploit its user-friendly, graphic features and mouse-directed control. A conventional Macintosh menu interface was developed in the object-oriented language SuperCard, a superset of the HyperCard. Programmer-specific edit and utility pulldown menus provide database definition, update, and consistency checks; user-specific popout menus and graphic selection techniques control patient document composition and output. Active project developed stopped in June; a live presentation is scheduled for November, 1990, at the 14th Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care (SCAMC).
