The writer Dr. RK Umesh Singh, is a REGIONAL MANAGER for SIEMENS, MEDICAL INSTRUMENTS SYSTEM in JEDDAH (KSA), since last 6yrs. SIEMENS is a global Multinational (GERMANY) Co.
A long-standing problem in medicine that predates the advent of digital computers is the expon
ential growth of general medical knowledge. This growth causes two problems for practicing physicians.
First, practitioners are expected to memorize a large body of factual detail which frankly exceeds the
limitations of human memory. Second, this body of knowledge is not static, hence practitioners have
trouble staying up-to-date. Historically, the principal solution has been the sub- specialization of medicine
into smaller areas of practice so that the body of knowledge require was limited as was the number of
journals that one would have to follow to stay current.
An emerging view is that physicians should not be expected to remember every fact that they
might ever need to know. Rather, they should learn basic skills (e.g., neurologic examination) and facts
commonly needed, and then have the skills to use information systems to access additional information as
is needed. A key goal of medical informatics has been the development of electronic reference materials
(e.g., electronic textbooks such as Cecil's and Harrisons and bibliographic databases such as MEDLINE)
and the computer systems and indexing schemes needed to provide such access. This latter goal has been
the key objective of the decade long Unified Medical Language System project of the National library of
Medicine.
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