Early Biomedical Computing and the Roots of Evidence-Based Medicine

Errors and fallibility in radiology: X-ray readings and expert radiologists, 1947–1960

“…Historian Joseph November's incisive historical analysis of biomedical computing recounts how Ledley and the engineer Lusted started collaborating on a project of computerizing diagnosis, influenced by a shared background and interest in operations research, an applied science that brought a 'procedural rationality' to a range of disciplines from military missions to production processes and the development of early computer programs. 36 Both researchers believed that medical practitioners would greatly benefit from assistance by computers, for example in automatic data processing or calculating diagnostic probabilities. Yet in order to start building computers that could assist doctors, first the activities of doctors needed to be formalized; that is, redescribed in a potentially computable language.…”

“…cit. (36), p. 94, notes that Lusted's vision for improving medicine was not the use of computers per se, but a change towards a shared commitment to standards and quantifying techniques that would ultimately result in a common quantitative language for complex medical information.…”

Introductory Chapter: From Hard to Soft Biology

“…In 1960, Dayhoff as the Associate Director of the National Biomedical Research Foundation began her collaboration with her physicist colleague, Robert S. Ledley, who, like Dayhoff, was interested in employing computers in biomedical sciences [3,5,6].…”

Better design, better hospitals

“…8 Historian Joseph November has shown that evidence-based medicine has its roots in the rise of biomedical computing around 1965. 9 One of the protagonists in November's study, Internet pioneer and Harvard psychologist J.C.R. Licklider, initiated several well-funded research programs that used computers to manage and design hospitals in the United States.…”