AIDA for reproductive medicine and the fertility clinic

A Medical Information System for the Fertility Department has been built (VERGYNIA) using the 4th generation software package AIDA to make the medical data accessible for research and teaching on the one hand and to assist the management of the department in the daily routine of patient care on the other. The system has been implemented on a PDP 11/23 computer with a 20 Mbyte hard disk, a 10 Mbyte removable disk and 128 Kbyte central memory. Three visual display terminals and a small printer are connected to the system. A dedicated line connection between this system and the computer facilities of the Department of Medical Informatics allows easy transfer of data for analysis by statistical packages and the transfer of new programs to the computer of the Fertility Department. The PDP 11/23 contains a production system, a developmental system, and a separate environment for research which can all three run simultaneously on the same computer without interfering with each other. VERGYNIA was predominantly constructed with AIDA; only parts of the output programs have been programmed in MUMPS, due to the fact that the required AIDA tools were not yet available at the time of development. The original version of VERGYNIA was already in operation in 1982 and was built with the tools that form the basis of the current AIDA release. Due to many ad hoc modifications and additions, the system needed a total redesign in order to make it compatible with the new enhancements of the current AIDA release. This redesign was carried out during 1985.