Problem-Oriented Medical Information System (PROMIS)

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From 1969 to 1982, Dr. Lawrence L. Weed worked at the University of Vermont to computerize the problem-oriented medical record (POMR). He recognized that the mind of the physician could not effectively process the large amount of information received, and this could interfere with the care of the patient. He began to organize the data temporarily to make them more available to the physician. This pairing of data led to the development of a commercial product, Problem - Knowledge Couplers (PKC - [1]).

PROMIS was one of the first electronic medical records (EMR) to implement support from other parts of the medical community (e.g., pharmacy and nursing). A patient’s profile could be accessed at any terminal with little delay in the transfer of the information, making healthcare more efficient. [Schultz 1988]

The system consisted of several dozen computer terminals which feeded into the central memory unit. A terminal was wheeled to a patient's bedside where the patient with the help of a nurse would enter he or her medical history via touch-sensitive screen. The physican would then review the entries and formulated the problems.

The introduction of the problem-oriented medical record (POMR) gy Lawrence Weed (1969) influenced medical thinking about both manual and automated medical records. By suggesting that the primary organization of the medical record should be by the medical problem and all diagnostic and therapeutic plans should be linked to a specific problme, weed was one of the people who recognize the importance of an internal structure of a medical record either stored on paper or in a computer. PROMIS was developed at the University of Vermont in 1976, by Jan Schultz and Dr. Larry Weed. Apparently, the developers of Carnegie Mellon University's ZOG system were so impressed with PROMIS that it reinspired them to return to their own work.PROMIS was a hypertext system specially designed for maintaining health care records.

PROMIS was an interactive, touch screen system that allowed users to access a medical record within a large body of medical knowledge. At its peak, the PROMIS system had over 60,000 frames of knowledge. PROMIS was also known for its fast responsiveness, especially for its time.



References

Gordon C. A Medical Revolution That Could...: The Work of the PROMIS Laboratory and Lawrence L. Weed, M.D. US Department of Health, Education Welfare National Institute of Education. 1978 http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/3f/1a/15.pdf

Schultz J. A History of the PROMIS Technology: An effective Human Interface. A History of Personal Workstations. 1988. New York. PP. 44-46. Available from: http://www.campwoodsw.com/mentorwizard/


A History of the PROMIS Technology: An Effective Human Interface (PDF file) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem-Oriented_Medical_Information_System"