System For Recording Statistics Of Disease

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30287, 13 November 1963, Page 16

System For Recording Statistics Of Disease

A system by which doctors In general practice all over tne world could report uniformly on the patients they saw, so that statistical information on various diseases m every country could be gathered, processed, and compared. was described m Christchurch yesterday by the chairman of the research committee of the College of General Practitioners, Dr. R. J. F. H. Pinsent, of Birmingham. England. •‘For the last IJO years or so, the main stream of medical advance has been in medical technology in hospitals.” said Dr Pinsent "But medical science has a primary need to go back every now and again to its source material—health and disease as they occur m the community, and that is what is happening at present. Hospital workers feel the need to get more information from outside, and the trained man on the spot is the general practitioner. He sees all the illness in the community —not what the hospitals see, barely 20 per cent of cases, and then often for a few days only. He sees, in fact, what it is really necessary to study: the animal in nature, no. the animal in the zoo.” The system of classification and recording was based on what was known as the "E-book,” after its designer. T S. Eimerl. Dr. Pinsent said. The book contained cards for more than 400 diseates. injuries, or immunisation conditions: these cards were flll<d in in such a way that all relevant statistical information was given in numerical form, so that it could be transferred to punch-cards and fed to a computer. The individual practitioner kept the original card as a record of his practice. The cards were changed at the end of each year, or when a special investigation was under way into some particular illness About 40 New Zealand practitioners interested in I

research had been using a simplified version of the Ebooks for some time under the guidance of the New Zealand research committee of the college. Dr. Pinsent brought with him 20 of the new version to augment the others. The main virtue of the new books, he said, was that information from them was more easily converted into punch-card form. Cards used by British doctors were processed at the British research committee’s records and statistical unit at Birmingham. Although this had not yet been done with New Zealand information, it would be possible with the new version of the book. The system was being tried in other countries, including Canada, the United States. Holland, Denmark, and Australia. Dr. Pinsent’s mission in New Zealand is to studv the application of British methods of research by general practitioners to conditions of practice here. He came to the Dominion midway through a tour of Australia. in which he has a similar purpose.