Electrocardiographic analysis by a computer system.

Today in medicine, as in most other fields of endeavor, rapid and tireless electronic systems can be envisioned as an integral part of the future to effect economy of human time. This paper describes a model system that demonstrates that physicians can utilize electronic instruments to relieve them of routine work. The implication is that utilization of these methods can afford the physician a means to allow him to utilize his time and efforts to better advantage in diagnosis and care of patients. Electrocardiographic analysis by means of a computer system was attempted as a pilot study because there are several challenging limitations to the extensive use of electrocardiography in screening or epidemiologic studies on large numbers of subjects in addition to the problems encountered by the practicing physician concerned with the single patient's electrocardiogram. If the problem is to interpret a large group of tracings in the usual clinical