Problems and benefits of using a computer for laboratory data processing.

More experience in the routine use of computers probably exists in the field of pathology than in any other branch of medicine. Even so, the planning and setting up of a computer system for handling laboratory data presents many difficulties. Definitive answers to many of the problems which arise cannot be expected until a lot more experience has been built up and it will probably be some years before the ideal system emerges and is perfected. However, the undoubted benefits of using a computer make it worth while struggling to overcome the initial difficulties. The problems and benefits discussed here are those which have been experienced at University College Hospital, London, when using an off-line computer to process biochemical data, and when planning for an on-line system which is to embrace all the data-handling activities of the chemical pathology service. Almost without exception, however, the problems and benefits are likely to be the same in all branches of pathology; many are discussed in greater technical detail elsewhere (Flynn, Alexander, Chalmers, Grant, Jenkins, Lapage, Robertson Smith, Squire, Stirland, Whitby, Whitehead, and Wootton, 1968).