Applications+in+medicine

__Applications in medicine__

Physical records usually require significant amounts of space to store them. When physical records are no longer maintained, the large amounts of storage space are no longer required. Paper, film, and other expensive physical media usage (and therefore cost) is also reduced with electronic record storage. When paper records are stored in different locations, furthermore, collecting and transporting them to a single location for review by a healthcare provider is time-consuming. Patients at some of the state's largest health systems over the next few years, for example, will have hospital rooms wired into a computer system that lets them see their vital signs, medicines and the name and photograph of the hospital staffer who enters their room. Electronic medical record systems are a powerful force for reducing errors, lowering costs and increasing doctor/patient satisfaction The advantages of an expert system over a doctor are...
 * a large database of knowledge can be added to and kept up-to-date - it can store more knowledge than a person.
 * the system cannot 'forget' or get facts wrong.
 * it survives forever. There is no loss of knowledge as there is when a doctor retires.
 * the computer can access specialist knowledge that a doctor may not have.