"Medical data’ on computer

Press, 29 March 1984, Page 21

"Medical data’ on computer

NZPA-AFP Peking Medical authorities in Chins are turning to computers to store the experience of the nation’s ageing practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine, the Xinhua News Agency reports. It singled out the case of Professor Zhang Zesheng, aged 88, a physician of traditional medicine, who has been bedridden for a year. Professor Zhang’s medical experience with diseases of the stomach, gullet,

; gallbladder, and intestines i was programmed into a computer at a hospital in Jiangsu Province in eastern ; China, the agency said. I These medical data were > computerised as the Jiangsu hospital’s top 10 physicians have an average age of 75 : — the oldest being 90 — and , cannot work full-time. f A traditional Chinese doci tor usually makes a diagnoi sis by observing the patient’s complexion, expression, movements, and > tongue, as well as asking , questions and feeling the

pulse, the news agency said. A computer was capable of performing all these functions.

It also pointed to the case of the Posts and Telecommunications Hospital in Shanghai where a microcomputer is now used to detect early symptoms of strokes, which it described as "one of the top killers in the world.”

“The computer processed the dozens of factors causing strokes and graded them ‘normal,’ ‘irregular,’ ‘warn-

ing’ and ‘danger’ with an 85 per cent accuracy rate," said the news agency.

The computer could also prescribe traditional Chinese medicine and had been used on 500 patients, averting many deaths, it said.

A similar use of microcomputers was reported for treatment of heart diseases in a hospital of the central province of Anhui and of bone fractures in Fuzhou, capital of the coastal province of Fujian.