Akron Children's Hospital and IBM
Akron Children's Hospital and IBM in 1966 started a “joint study” to determine if it was possible to eliminate the paperwork or at least part of the paperwork which has burdened the nurses and doctors in hospitals for many years. In this short video then hospital president Roger J. Sherman introduces the system, giving a brief insight into how the system worked. One aspect of the very forward-thinking portrayed in this video, made in 1966, is that the nurse on the floor was reminded by the computer system when a medication was due for one of her patients, including the drug name and dosage. The conclusion reached in the video was that paperwork can be reduced, disease "correlation" can be performed, and errors reduced.
Introduction
Roger J. Sherman, the narrator of the above video, and former Children’s Hospital president died on May 18, 2011 at the age of 96. His obituary [1] was published on The Akron Beacon Journal’s web site (www.Ohio.com Akron), and contained the following:
- Long before anyone was using computers, way back in the 1960s, Roger had the foresight to see computers had their advantages, ...
- With an IBM grant, he introduced computers to the hospital. He used them to display lab results on each floor so that people didn't have to call down to the lab to get the information.
- The hospital's auditorium bears his name.
Akron Children’s Hospital, during the time period of this study, is one of the hospitals listed in Melville H. Hodge’s 1978 book titled Medical Information Systems: A Resource for Hospitals. The book states, “… in the early 1960s, a small group of hospitals became identified with one common goal, that of a commitment to serve as a site for the development of computerized handling of patient information.”
The hospital and IBM are also referred, during the same time period, in a brochure titled Reducing Medical Errors: IT Helps Secure the Patient Safety Net [2], published by The McGraw-Hill Companies in 2004. It includes Children’s Hospital in a Safety First time line and states that in “1965: Children’s Hospital, Akron, Ohio, installs IBM model 1620 with 1710 process control system (shown in 1966 photo- graph at left) and keys for order entry, admissions, nutrition services and census information.”
