Editorial: On the future of mechanical information files

Some years ago, a law case involving medical malpractice was reported in which a mechanized information file played a crucial role. Specifically, the relatives of a deceased patient were suing to recover damages for the patient's alleged wrongful death as caused by the negligent misdiagnosis of the doctors involved in the case. The prosecution produced an expert witness who clMmed that had he had a patient with the given symptoms, his treatment would have been different. and the patient might have been saved. It happened that the hospital with which ~he expert witness was connected had installed a mechanized system for patient records, so that when the actual cause of death became known upon autopsy (Budd-Chiari Syndrome, a rare disease of the liver, normally fatal and irreversible), it was possible to try to find cases of this disease previously treated by the expert witness. Over 6,250,000 patients records were searched automatically , producing twelve instances of the Budd-Chiari disease, including one for a patient of this particular witness. An examination of the particular record showed that the expert witness had in fact not applied to his own patient the treatment he was now recommending, and that in that case also a correct diagnosis was made only upon autopsy. The ease under trial was eventually dismissed, and, in the words of the hospital administrator who cross-examined the expert witness, as reported in the June 1963 issue of M.U.L.L.; "... the effectiveness of my cross examination belongs, in my opinion, to the electronic eMculator of the hospital where the plaintiff's expert had practiced. .. which achieved in a matter of 25 minutes what a whole .army of lawyers could not have achieved in a month (namely, to pick out the one applicable record out of over six million)." This pat;ticular trial took place a few years ago and gives a preview of the constan~tly increasing importance in our lives of mechanized information files. We now have the ability to record and store a great mass of information in different areas, including not only medical records, but also job records, tax records, military records, bank records, school records, court records, and many others. Moreover, muctl of this information can now be processed simultaneously, and can be properly correlated and evalua~ted. Finally, beginnings have been made toward the generation of automatic deductive systems , designed to supply new information from previously available data. In …