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A History of Computerized Medical Interviews

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Buying Equipment and Programs for Home or Office

Part of the book series: M. D. Computing: Benchmark Papers ((MD COMPUTING))

Abstract

My work with patient/computer dialogue began in 1964 in collaboration with Philip Hicks, Lawrence Van Cura, and other colleagues at the University of Wisconsin. We hypothesized that we could program a computer to take a medical history directly from a patient. Our motivation came in part from a theoretical question: Could a computer model the physician? Could it actually interview a patient? There were also practical motives. Northern Wisconsin was short of physicians; for those who were seeing up to 40 or 50 patients a day, there was barely enough time to ask “Where does it hurt?,” let alone all the other questions in the standard interview. In America, taking medical histories is a time-consuming and expensive process; talk is not cheap in medicine.

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Authors
  1. Warner V. Slack M.D.
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Indiana University Medical Center, Indianapolis, Indiana, 46202, USA

    Clement J. McDonald M.D.

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© 1987 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Slack, W.V. (1987). A History of Computerized Medical Interviews. In: McDonald, C.J. (eds) Buying Equipment and Programs for Home or Office. M. D. Computing: Benchmark Papers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4708-1_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4708-1_22

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-9124-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-4708-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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