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Health care organizations throughout Pennsylvania are scrambling to cope with the "Year 2000 bug," a potentially serious software glitch that affects almost all existing machines, whether mainframes or desktop PCs. State agencies and most large institutions say that the problems are difficult but manageable. Individual physicians may have less to worry about, but can't afford complacency.
A computer program is presented which determines the secondary structure of linear RNA molecules by simulating a hypothetical process of folding. This process implies the concept of 'nucleation centres', regions in RNA which locally trigger the folding. During the simulation, the RNA is allowed to fold into pseudoknotted structures, unlike all other programs predicting RNA secondary structure. The simulation uses published, experimentally determined free energy values for nearest neighbour base pair stackings and loop regions, except for new extrapolated values for loops larger than seven nucleotides. The free energy value for a loop arising from pseudoknot formation is set to a single, estimated value of 4.2 kcal/mole. Especially in the case of long RNA sequences, our program appears superior to other secondary structure predicting programs described so far, as tests on tRNAs, the LSU intron of Tetrahymena thermophila and a number of plant viral RNAs show. In addition, pseudoknotted structures are often predicted successfully. The program is written in mainframe APL and is adapted to run on IBM compatible PCs, Atari ST and Macintosh personal computers. On an 8 MHz 8088 standard PC without coprocessor, using STSC APL, it folds a sequence of 700 nucleotides in one and a half hour.
Analysis of data recorded in 626 questionnaires on systems used to automate medical libraries by type of library showed that academic and industrial libraries automated all serial and book functions to a greater degree that the other types of medical libraries (hospital, governmental, institutional and medical centre). Almost 75% of the academic libraries had automated some or all serial functions; 80% had automated some or all book functions. Half of the hospital, institutional and medical centre libraries (50-51%) performed all serial functions manually; 29-40% performed all book functions manually. No software was used consistently by all types of libraries to process serials or books. Mainframe or minicomputers were used more by academic libraries to process serials and books than personal computers.
An efficient and cost effective computerized education records system was developed to provide centralized and decentralized reports of education participation. Collaboration with a computer analyst and programmer was essential to integrate our education information database with the hospital's mainframe system.
HPI has chosen a unique approach in its computer project development and implementation. It has prioritized financial and distributive pharmacy services incorporated into a mainframe system. This system is intended as a national framework with high flexibility for addition of new services. It is referred to as Patient Records Electronically Prepared (PREP).
Hard- and software components offered by different manufacturers are compared with regard to applicability within clinical research projects. The fact that hard- and software have to communicate intensively during A/D conversion is given special attention, and the resulting guidelines for the selection of components are discussed. Accessing converted data from customized evaluation programs, as well as concepts of data transfer to a mainframe are covered in separate sections.
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This paper reports the results of an evaluation study of the current level of performance given by ANEMIA, a knowledge-based consultation system addressing the clinical problem of managing anemic patients. ANEMIA was developed on a mainframe using the AI programming scheme EXPERT and then translated into a version running on a personal computer. At present the system is able to provide assistance in the diagnosis and management of 65 disease entities. After extensive local testing of accuracy, completeness, and consistency of the knowledge base included into ANEMIA, we designed a study to evaluate whether the system is able to appropriately mirror also the reasoning of well-known hematologists other than those who provided the knowledge. We were also interested in testing whether there were conflicting opinions among hematologists. Thus, we designed a validation study in which ANEMIA's performance could be compared with that of six hematologists and the interexpert consensus evaluated. ANEMIA's overall performance was judged acceptable in 87% (26/30) of the cases, while expert evaluators agreed with their colleagues in 90% (27/30) of them. A low interexpert consensus was found: considering the ratings given by different hematologists to the same ANEMIA performance, complete agreement occurred only 47% of the time.
GRIFFIN (graphics investigation of familial information), an interactive graphics system for exploratory investigation of data on individuals associated by familial relationships, was designed to provide genetic epidemiologists a flexible, rapidly responsive tool for viewing and guiding exploration of complex databases in the context of familiar pedigree structures. It graphically portrays both categorical and multivariate scalar data on individuals in those structures. The display can be inverted to show all ancestors and descendants of any individual the user designates. It provides cues to censored information when bushy pedigrees cannot be fully displayed without sacrificing legibility. These guide users on where to next invert the system. Investigators may translate/zoom the display, vary the mode of representing data, point to individuals to obtain displays of alphameric information about them, etc. Developed in Fortran using IBM's GDDM graphics subroutines for an IBM 3090 mainframe, GRIFFIN's design anticipates porting to smaller systems.
A system of programs which process data on a microcomputer for a case/comparison study is described. The procedures process the data from the abstracted case source records, to control selection, interview data management, and the selection of data subsets for analysis. The capabilities of various data processing modules are outlined, and cost estimates of an existing implementation are discussed. The microcomputer is presented as an alternative to mainframe data management.
The techniques of data management constitute a principal field in medical informatics, both for systems oriented to sole information retrieval, and basic-systems for more sophisticated applications. The operative utility of a data base depends on a careful planning based on foreseen requirements, and on the observance of some methodological rules. Such as, a precised preliminary study for the selection of clinical data to include in the data base, the choice of better tools and methodologies for the data collection and the right programming of software for the management of the archives. The knowledge of these problems allows, in many cases, the programming of computerized data base to use efficiently in the management of clinical information and in the planning of research. These problems, which do not depend on the hardware used, are commonly found in these applications. However, they have to be solved either for the use of large data base in hospital, which run on mainframe, or for the archives of the department, which can be built by every clinician on his own personal computer.
Rapid advances in Information Technology in recent years have provided powerful computers and software that can be innovatively applied to create powerful pedagogical courseware that go beyond what precursors like the PLATO project could do on the mainframes of yesteryear. This article focusses on the research and development that we have carried out which is applicable to the whole area of education (including medical education). It introduces the elements of hypertext, hypermedia and the pedagogical user interface. It illustrates the principles necessary for the communication of conceptual, functional and structural knowledge. It emphasises the key aspect of mastery of Information Technology necessary for a new dimension in Computer-Enhanced Learning that will be of relevance to the Information Society of the 21st century.
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Client/server architecture has become the darling of I/S professionals. The intelligence is spread among several processors, creating enormous flexibility. But are C/S systems easier, cheaper and faster than the good old mainframe? Not quite yet.
The VA DHCP, hospital computer program represents an integral solution to the complex clinical and administrative functions of any hospital world wide. Developed by the Department of Veterans Administration, it has until lately run exclusively in mainframe platforms. The recent implementation in PCs opens the opportunity for use in Latinamerica. Detailed description of the strategy for Spanish, local implementation in Colombia is made.
Programs for data analysis available on microcomputers now rival those programs available for mainframes in terms of ease of use, accuracy, accessibility, and cost. Researchers should seriously consider the possibilities that exist for data analysis on both the microcomputer and the mainframe. An informed decision will allow best use of available resources.
We describe the further development of a widely used package of DNA/protein sequence analysis programs (1). Important revisions have been made based on user experience, and new features, multi-user capability, and a set of large scale homology programs have been added. The programs are very user friendly, economical of time and memory, and extremely transportable. They are written in a version of FORTRAN which will compile, with a few defined changes, as FORTRAN 66, FORTRAN 77, FORTRAN IV, FORTRAN IV+, and others. They are running on a variety of microcomputers, minicomputers, and mainframes, in both single user and multi-user configurations.