The day may never come when the clinician will handle a deck of punched cards with the familiarity of his stethoscope.
But the practicing physician is beginning to attain a valuable acquaintance with the computer that someday may approach the working partnership already enjoyed by the research scientist.
An estimated 100 medical centers in the United States now have computers "on line" for other than research purposes. A great many other small and medium-sized facilities are tied by telephone to "mother" computers miles away.
The field of biomedical computation now claims a spot at most major medical meetings, has its own journals and tests, and has even reached the status where physicians are rendering critical analyses of it.
A typical view was expressed at a recent medical meeting by James V. Maloney, MD, associate professor of surgery at the University of California at Los Angeles. Although much of his own