Towards Microfilm Systems in the Health Service

Abstract

With rapidly increasing costs of labour, in the future we shall be forced to accept automatic retrieval systems for all hospital records, including case notes, during the next ten or twenty years.

The considerable progress which has been made in storage of X-ray film copies over the last five years, has paved the way to a consideration of how other records can be stored and retrieved in smaller and more convenient forms, so that the ultimate, of all records being immediately and remotely retrievable in consulting rooms, clinics and wards, is rapidly becoming a practicability. For some records, conventional computer type storage and retrieval is not ideal, particularly where records are in pictorial form. For such records, a new type of microfilm storage would seem to give great advantages, and is capable of being integrated with computer stored records of other types into a comprehensive record system.