Historical Perspectives: Commentary on G. Octo Barnett's Report to the Computer Research Study Section

Dr. Barnett's report is an interesting and very well-written analysis of “the state of the art” of hospital information systems of the day (in 1966). Octo's many friends will miss the customary “aw shucks” charm of his personal presentations but cannot fail to delight in his carefully stated, wide-ranging views. These cover the many systems and problems he encountered, and (why are we not surprised?) his strong recommendations for improvement. The reader can see immediately that the views—and indeed the wisdom we read here—were wrought of hospital and computer laboratory experience, namely, the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Information Project, not lifted from a lecture or book. A bit of history: the MGH project was important and unique in several ways. I had the opportunity to site visit it many times, always with admiration and amazement. The work was funded jointly by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American Hospital Association. This may not have been unique, but I know of no other such research funding partnership. The project was undertaken jointly by the distinguished Boston engineering firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc., along with MGH. Jordan Baruch and Octo Barnett were the Principal Investigators for their organizations. They called their effort “the development of a real-time Time-Shared computer system to be used in storage and retrieval of information in the medical environment.”1 In his report, Barnett goes far beyond just the MGH project in summarizing medical computer developments for the NIH Study Section. For the reader who wants an excellent two-volume description of this kind of research, there is nothing to compete with Stacy and Waxman.2 Who will be the first reader to find the following statement? “The computer system has the storage capacity, computing capacity, and communication capacity to serve approximately 4000 hospital beds using …