Concept and implementation of a program for treatments and statistical or logical interrogations of a file: LOGIST

The pursuit of a total data processing system free of language and programming

The interactive system FLXFL has been reconstructed as a versatile tool for data analysis. The system now allows the user to carry out such step-by-step analysis as multivariate analysis, converting input data, changing the combination of variables, or making use of the intermediate result, all in an interactive mode. Another new feature is the interactive form designing facility for record output. This unique function provides flexibility in the output style without forcing laborious programming work on the user. Retaining the principle of operational simplicity, all the processes are consistently carried out based on menu-selection. The system has processed as many as 50,000 records in the past, and currently it runs at three clinical institutions. Through experience with FLXFL, it is concluded that in the medical environment the simplicity of the menu-based operation fully offsets the restrictions imposed.

[A chronological linkage technic of records and use of the obtained information. Application to the functional control of cardiac stimulators]

The application of information processing to the study of the evolution of the patient's state requires the constituting of a file which contains the values of different items as functions of time. There are many methods for doing this and most of them appeal to the construction of a complex database. The technique presented in the paper paper tries at first to constitute, for each patient, some records, of which every one corresponds to a determined "operation' (the term "operation' is taken in the wide sense; example: consultation, surgical intervention,...) then to link them according to the chronological order. It has the advantage of being easy so that it may be used even on minicomputers. Furthermore, the exploitation of the resultant data file is very easy. This method is well suited to problems such as the examination of the longitudinal investigations, the treatment of records of the patients who went through several operations, etc. The application presented here is the checking of the functioning of pacemakers. We wrote on a minicomputer MITRA 15/125 transferable general program (using FORTRAN IV exclusively), which allows one to carry out the linking and to exploit the resultant file. It is so designed that the addition of new procedures involved in new applications may be very easy.