Electronic health information services: a review
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045247 |
| Date | 01 April 1993 |
| Published date | 01 April 1993 |
| Pages | 283-287 |
| Author | Glenda Myers |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Article
Electronic health
information services: a
review
Glenda Myers
Witwatersrand Medical
Library,
University of the
Witwatersrand,
7
York
Road,
2193 Parktown,
Johannesburg, South Africa
Abstract: Medical libraries have been involved with
automated services for over a century, beginning with the
association of John Shaw Billings,
the
Director of the
Library of the Surgeon-General's Office of the US Army and
Herman Hollerith, founder of the Computing-Tabulating-
Recording Company, which eventually changed
its
name to
IBM. In the early 1960s,
the
National Library of Medicine
(NLM) began development of
MEDLARS,
the first
successful large-scale online bibliographic information
retrieval system. More recent developments include use of
CDROM discs for searching databases, full-text online and
CDROM medical journals and experiments in document
delivery such as
ADONIS.
Currently, the proliferation of
medical end-users, combined
with
the need for rapid
publication of medical data, has led
to
the first attempt at
electronic publishing in the form of the Online Journal of
Current Clinical Trials. The
Internet,
a global computer
network of networks, is now being used to transmit
up-to-date medical information to practitioners worldwide,
while satellite systems such as SatelLife provide the means
to transmit health care information to rural areas in
developing countries. This paper provides an overview of
electronic health information systems currently available,
and discusses their implications for
the
dissemination of
information for medical practitioners within the context of
the health care infrastructure in South Africa.
1.
Introduction
Although medical libraries have been linked to various auto-
mated services for many years, it still comes as something of
a shock to learn that this association dates back well over a
century. John Shaw Billings, who was the Director of
the
Li-
brary of the Surgeon-General's Office of the US Army, also
happened to be a consultant to the American Census Bureau,
and it was he who suggested to Herman Hollerith that it
should be possible to invent some sort of tabulating machine
for the
1890
census
data.
Hollerith's efforts in
this
regard were
to result in the immortalisation of his name in the standard
coding pattern for letters and numbers on a punched, or Hol-
lerith, card. He then went on to found the now legendary
Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, later to change
its name to IBM (Pizer 1984, p.337). This was obviously not
the beginning of general efforts in automation, but it was the
first time that
libraries,
statistical information and automation
could be said to come together.
However, while Billings conceived the Index Catalogue
(one of the precursors to the current Index Medicus) in 1876
and the idea of the punched card in 1883, it was to be over
eighty years later that the two concepts were successfully
united (Adams
1972,
p.532).
2.
MEDLARS, SUNY Biomedical Communication
Network and BRS
One of the major reasons for the initiation of projects that led
ultimately
to the
formation of the Medical Literature Analysis
and Retrieval System (MEDLARS), was
the
pressing need by
1944 to rationalise the functions of the three existing medical
bibliographic services: the Index Catalogue, the Quarterly
Cumulative Index Medicus and the Current List of Medical
Literature (Adams 1972, p.524). Also of prime importance
was the principal function of the Army Medical Library,
namely the publication of an index to the journal literature of
the medical sciences, thus continuing the indexing traditions
laid down by John Shaw Billings.
The history of the early research projects culminating in
the development of MEDLARS makes fascinating reading
for information
scientists,
being peppered with names such as
Dr Eugene Garfield, later of ISI fame and Dr Mortimer Taube,
inventor of the Uniterm system. Worthy of note too is the
environment in which these developments took place, begin-
ning with the concept of the Memex, Vannevar Bush's elec-
tronic adaptation of the World Brain proposed by H.G. Wells,
which had captured the imagination of
all.
The launch of the
first Sputnik added greatly to the impetus of the research
thrust into machine-aided information retrieval systems, as
American politicians rapidly convinced themselves (not
without help from American information specialists!) that the
spectacular Soviet feat had been achieved with assistance
from a superior scientific and technical information service
(Adams 1972, p.529).
By 1956, when the Army Medical Library was trans-
formed by federal legislation into the National Library of
Medicine (NLM), the feasibility of using electronic digital
computers for the publication of Index Medicus and as
a
basis
The Electronic Library, Vol.
11,
No. 4/5, August/October 1993 283
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