Article 4 of 7

This article is about the completion of a key element of the proposed medical information system--the national research center.

To realize the most from this article you need to read the 3 previous articles. However, I will try and summarize some of the key points of those articles here.

The most effective means of evaluating a person's health would of course be through some direct means of looking into the human organism to see what is truly taking place. Fortunately, as strange as it may seem, the human body does provide such a window in the form of its biochemical makeup. Furthermore, even more encouraging, there is a science already fully developed that is taking full advantage of that body phenomenon called clinical laboratory science. These are major factors in the success any advanced health care system.

I highly recommend that you take a minute here to read what the experts have to say on that matter by clicking on the link (called page 18) at the end of this article. These experts are from text books located in the University of Michigan's Medical Library.

As described in the link reference on page 18, the advantages of the biochemical makeup of the body is very impressive indeed. Clinical laboratory science is a highly computerized and a very rapidly moving industry. Hundreds of critical tests are now available for use. That industry is an important part of the current health care system. The blood or tissue tests that your doctor orders for you when he or she is suspicious of a given medical condition that needs verification usually involves clinical laboratory science.

The key difference between the proposed national medical information system and the current health care system lies in the difference in the use of these data. The current health care system primarily uses it to evaluate a disease condition whereas the proposed system would apply it on a broader scale basis to include disease prevention and wellness"taking advantage of far more of what clinical science has to offer.

To get a good feel of some of the amazing success in clinical laboratory science click on link (45-47) at the end of this article.

The proposed medical information system would use a completely new and far different type of application of clinical laboratory data. Far larger test profiles (100 blood constituents taken from one blood test) would be used in conjunction with a very sophisticated national research system for massive correlation to human health"including disease prevention and wellness.

Following is a remaining key element of the proposed system. Article 3 was discussed with the use of handout A. A link to handout A is provided at the end of this article and should be referred to again here. This article will discuss the underlying technical strengths of that system by showing briefly how and why the health data fed into the national research center is so effective in its correlation to human health and wellness.

Referring back to the 100 test profile pattern discussed in article 3, it was shown that the 100 individual bits of test information along with patient environmental and patient data would be fed to the national research computer center (marked case #1). The research computers would record the profile pattern results and correlate that particular combination of test results to a particular health related condition. With the size of this 100 test profile pattern, as discussed earlier, there would be literally trillions of possible combinations involved. Of those trillions of possibilities, there would conservatively end up being at least millions of what we would call significant combinations that would represent significant health related information. The National Research Center would then relate that data to the individual's current health condition, history, family history, the individual's environment, and also to the same data of tens of millions of other patients. This is an enormous amount of health information for the supercomputers to pull together and relate to human health conditions!

In addition, there would no doubt also be smaller sets of tests of interest within that overall 100 test profile, such as separate groups of hormones, enzymes, antibodies and other special tests that could also be read and analyzed as separate group combinations as well. Many of us realize how very important these various groups are to our well being.

Let me stop here and review this for a moment. We talk about millions of significant health data combinations. So why is it necessary for such a breadth of examination capacity? Basically, because of the extreme complexities involving our environment, our health and of course their complex inter-relationship. For example, if we (as individuals) try to determine what it is in our environment that is having an effect on our health, either positive or negative, we know it's usually very difficult to do. We know there are literally dozens of elements (variables) in our personal environment that could affect our health. So how do we go about narrowing it down to determine what it is in a person's environment that is likely affecting his or her health?

The system described here does it in two ways, it uses the extreme reading breadth of the profile pattern (as discussed in article 3), to read an individuals test results along with the input of the environmental and doctor's medical examination report. It was shown that this data was then fed into the national research center system and compared to millions of other patient's health conditions, environments and test results.

This comparison, to the millions of other patients, would soon be very effective in narrowing the unknown element, or elements, down to the common denominator (or denominators) of what it is in the environment that normally affects people's health in certain ways. Very few patients would have the exact same environment and health conditions. Comparing millions of patient's health to their environmental exposures would provide a very effective screening process. The results of this research would then be fed back into the state diagnostic computers to diagnose specific individuals based on their individual profile pattern results and their individual environmental and physical examination reports.

This article discusses the key to success for any highly advanced health care system, and also the sophisticated features of the proposed medical system's research center.