UH2@psuvm.psu.edu (Lee Sailer) (02/06/91)
I am working on an R&D project for the Navy Bureau of Medicine.
In a nutshell, the goal of the project is to integrate several
existing and new functions into a single, transportable system
for use by Medical Corpsman. The system functions include
everything from office automation tasks such as
o Records, inventory, and patient history management
o Word processing, telecomm, spreadsheet
o Hypermedia access to numerous medical manuals
o Full-motion video display of medical procedures and expert
system diagnostic support.
o Voice recognition and text/screen to voice conversion
Corpsman are the people who operate the medical facilities.
While stationed at a large base, they run the sick bay, schedule
immunizations and periodic exams, manage inventory, and so on.
However, at smaller locations, especially isolated ones such as
submarines, they become responsible for more and more of the
primary health care, and may even be called upon to perform the
kind of procedures, including diagnosis, normally reserved for
MDs only.
We have reached a point where we need to re-evaluate the original
platform chosen: MSDOS 4.01, 486, 200MB SCSI, CD-ROM, Laser Disc
player, 1GB read-write optical, mouse, and VGA.
One of the Primary Goals of the project is to *assemble* the
system from available hardware and software. This is why we
started with MSDOS, since there is more available hardware and
software in that marketplace than in others.
However (you've probably guessed), we are having a very hard time
squeezing it all into one, integrated system. Even using a
memory manager such as QEMM386 v5.1 there are just too many
device drivers and workspace buffers. In fact, some of the
products we are trying to squeeze in pretty much require their
own 640K machine to run, period.
THE QUESTION...
So, what other platforms should we consider? What software and
hardware is available for OS/2, SparcStation, NeXT and so on that
could be used to assemble such a system.
I would be grateful for any ideas, especially descriptions of
available products such as voice recognition or Hypermedia. We
are mostly MSDOS and Amiga wise, and so need most of our advice
for the others.
I am posting this to several groups, but it isn't cross-posted.
I hope that this reduces any internacine conflicts 8-)
leejohnston@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Jon Johnston) (02/07/91)
Well, first of all with a Macintosh you won't run into the device
driver/memory problem that you did with a DOS machine. Chances are, if you
choose something with a Unix base, it's going to be expensive, and also hard
to configure.
I would suggest a Macintosh, whatever Mac, the faster the better
(obviously... an Fx, if you want), and using a 4th Dimension application.
There are plent of applications avaiable in 4D for doing the office
automation, and the compiler recently released by 4D will help with speed
You can write externals for 4th Dimension, so you could possibly tie them
to the video disc, the CD-ROM, communications, etc. Due to the release of the
new packages such as 4D Write, 4D Calc, you can do a lot of processing with
4D, but tie it all back into the database.
You could probably do a lot of this with Hypercard and XCMDs, also, a lot
of ties to video discs and such already exist, there are database add-ons
available (Hyper-Hit, although I confess I've never used this and don't know
how well it works.)
The choice of the two depends upon whether or not you'd like to base
everything in a database, or in Hypercard.
Well, that's my two cents..........
good luck. let us know what you choose.
jon johnston
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