Your continuing discussions about the origins of, and influences

on, evidence-based medicine have been most interesting.One

sees requests for the experience of veterans in the field as

well as enquiries asking if EBM can really be integrated into

day-to-day work.

My veterancy stems only from my stated age of 69, my atten-

dance at a 1966 conference on computed applications in 

radiology (the United States' first), and my own development

of a "generic" electronic records-maker in 1984. After looking

back at this program's results in 2005, one hopes that interested

readers would agree that it does integrate evidence with practice

in these ways.

First, one of the features of  the software is the ability to take

complete literature citations and replicate them in a patient's

medical record. In the past, these citings were intended to help

referring practitioners judge the validity of film readings by serving

as pointers to the evidence supporting why a given x-ray diagnosis

had been made.Now, they provide quick memory refreshments

when "senior moments" cloud my aging brain.

Second, running search routines shows that several thousand

references and case advisories have been recorded in over

146,000 clinical reports generated since 1992. Referenced

material goes back to books published in the 1950s and

forward to journal articles read just this week. (For articles 

describing the software, "Google in" my name. To inspect

the free program at its medical education web site, "Yahoo

up" the title "STAT*WRITER").

In closing, it is hoped that this story from one old head shows

that evidence abstracted from the medical literature can be

integrated with daily practice electronically.

To the web-master, thank you for keeping me on your list-

serve...and best wishes to you all in the pursuit of your projects.

Karl T. Dockray, MD, DABR, ABNM

1810 19th Street

Lubbock, Texas USA 79401