[log in to unmask],Net writes:
>Sorry about your patient but have the hospital not heard of the phone
>if it
>was so urgent?

I don't think voice phone would enable them to send a message to await
me when I arrived.

Having said that, they do seem to be using fax as a synchronous
messaging device, which strikes me as bizarre.

And surely you would not suggest that passing messages by dictation
over the telephone is efficient effective or safe?  

Actually it was through the co-op, not the hospital.

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The Exeter System is an unusual choice nowadays.  
It is philosophically unassailable, except by the odd few who have a
belief in the primacy of the market, since it is owned by its users,
who are around here at any rate highly satisfied with its peculiar
interface.

It was designed from the start as a system for keeping complete records
on, and holds them in the same fashion as the Whipton Project, the only
desktop GP system to have predated it (it ran for 6 weeks, and set the
mould).  SIx basic screens, etc.

THe Abies system which came along a while later and became Meditel
System 5 learned from it and shows this, it preserved the virtues, and
added a classic organisation as well.  Another system produced at
approximately the same time and also introduced to GPs in large numbers
also observed the lessons of the Exeter System, and avoided applying
them.  (caution: users and suppliers of both Meditel and another system
might well have a different view of their history).

I know little of dispensing, but the only dispensing practice in Exeter
uses the Exeter System, and appears satisfied with its performance in
that respect.

The narrative is quirky (I was particularly taken with the feature it
has in common with my favourite aunt's 1935 typewriter, of ringing the
bell as you approach the end of a line to remind you to finiisch the
word, and type a ditto if you want to do another line, followed by
pulling the carriage return handle.

The assignment of functions to the keys is reminiscent of th eage when
keys meant whatever you wanted them to mean, but surely would be
improved by the provision of a few custom keytops.

It runs in some old and odd operating environment called MUMPS, which
sticks it firmly in the retro computing area.  (caution: there may be
people with other views on that one as well)

One of the strikingly useful features of the Exeter System, which you
will appreciate immediately, is the ability to make one of those lines
of narrative private - locked so only the person who originally wrote
it can access it - a considerable advance on the privacy of paper.  I
don't think I ever found out what happens to those lines when you print
out the notes.  

You will deduce from the layout of the ID numbers that the original
intention was to allow records to be moved from one practice to
another, but like me wonder why that was never achieved.






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