Technology to 'force changes’ for doctors

Press, 3 September 1984, Page 6

Technology to 'force changes’ for doctors

PA Hamilton Advances in technology would force big changes in medical general practice, doctors have been told in Hamilton. Computers will link general practitioners to the information explosion, and molecular biological tools will change the face of medicine, according to an Australian medical educator Dr Warren Ogborne..

He was one of the principal speakers at the Waikato Post-graduate Medical Society’s general practitioners’ conference at Waikato Hospital; ' Many doctors were using computers for billing and some for medical records, Dr Ogborne said. “But we need to come on line,” he said. Information technology would free specialists to develop the frontiers of their expertise. It would vastly expand general practitifer access to information' to the benefit of the

patient. General practitioners were too occupied ' with tasks better done by computers, Dr Ogborne said. He spoke of complete patient health profiles prepared by computer and electro-c a r d i o g r a m machines capable of reading a heart beat, detecting abnormalities, suggesting probable causes and proposing treatment options. “We need to jump into a new framework of thought The tools of the future are going to be quite different from the tools of the past.” Molecular biology development would have immense impact on medicine, Dr Ogborne said. It would replace timeconsuming and costly laboratory tests with new, low cost fests taking mere minutes.

It would provide new, safe, pure, low cost vaccines for disease prevention, and less.-j-postly, more pugf. tailoKmade drugs I§r therapy. " ' 1