Data Management for Rapid Access to Newborn Intensive-Care Information.
Michael M. Maurer, Philip J. Moore, Charles N. Mead, Jeffrey A. Johnson, Richard E. Marshall, L. Thomas · PubMed Central · 1980
Hospitalization in a Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU) averages 21 days but may extend to 8-9 months. Voluminous amounts of clinical and laboratory data make it difficult to systematically study disease processes by review of the conventional medical record. Therefore, a minicomputer-based system was developed to aid in the analysis of the incidence, course, interrelationships and demographic features of the various newborn illnesses seen in a referral NICU averaging 600 admissions per year. The major advantage of this system is that it permits the user to explore rapidly a variety of possibly significant relationships in a large population of newborns. Direct physician (rather than programmer) interaction with the computer is encouraged.