50 Years Ago

Doctors and nurses are in danger of being left behind as automation finds its way into the clinical world. The need to devise an organized programme of instruction is stressed by a report … from a working party of the British Medical Association Planning Unit, which concludes that this aspect of medical education “has so far scarcely been faced”. Many of the existing courses in medical computing whether run by the computer industry or by other private firms, are under attack for involving too many vested interests. Where training is most needed is for the simple task of information retrieval. Doctors and nurses will need to be taught how to retrieve a patient’s medical history out of a computer and how to read in the details of his treatment. Instruction of this kind should be given on university medical courses, but medical qualifications are not required to include any knowledge of computers. Further, with the prospect of computers to aid screening and diagnosis, there will have to be appreciation courses for bringing qualified doctors up to date … The report regrets that there has been no lead from the Department of Health and Social Security, which is supposed to be allocating large sums of money to the Health Service for the introduction of computers to hospitals.

From Nature 15 November 1969

100 Years Ago

During the fifty years that Nature has provided a weekly summary of science the changes in medicine, particularly as regards diagnosis and treatment, have been without parallel. This is shown by a comparison of the toll of disease, on one hand in the late war, and on the other in the Crimean, North and South, and Franco-Prussian Wars. The changed picture is due to the practical application of science. Pasteur’s researches gave us bacteriology and a knowledge of the nature of infection, and rendered possible the modern treatment of wounds, introduced by Lister, and the use of serums and vaccines. The diagnostic and therapeutical use of X-rays, the employment of radium, and many other advances are further gifts from science. But this transformation of medical practice only reveals a multitude of important problems concerned with the prevention, early detection, and effective treatment of disease, and for their solution we must look to scientific research.

From Nature 13 November 1919