Analysis of hospital bacteriological data.

Machine analysis and reporting has been widely applied to the numerical results of clinical biochemistry and haematology. Few have applied computers to routine bacteriology, although they have been of great value in taxonomy. This is unfortunate but stems, perhaps, from failure to appreciate that although reports may contain several different sorts of information, all of them may be given numerical values. This conversion, however, requires the bacteriologist to conform to a standard methodology to which some might object. Another reason for this delay is probably that most of the available computer languages and compilers tend to be too inflexible for easy adaptation to the diversity of information which clinical bacteriologists may want to analyse. The present investigations were therefore undertaken to discover the suitability of a compiler, designed for survey analysis, for obtaining statistical and epidemiological information from the reports of a hospital bacteriology laboratory. Bacteriology is inseparable from epidemiology with its implied ability to make predictions derived from past experience. At its simplest a knowledge of the prevalence and drug sensitivity of specific pathogenic bacteria should increase the precision of clinical diagnosis and treatment. Within the laboratory, this information could also be used as a form of quality control by drawing attention to changes in reporting practice.