A Programming Discipline for Laboratory Computing

The history of the development of digital computer systems for use in medical care and biological laboratory experiments is reviewed, with special emphasis on programming languages. The relevance to this application of techniques first used in the design of operating systems for simultaneous multiple use of large computer systems and in performing concurrent real-time tasks is demonstrated. A number of applications and specially designed computerized instruments for neurophysiology, in which the programming language Modula was used, are described. The strengths and limitations of Modula are evaluated. The essential parallelism of laboratory and clinical monitoring tasks would seem to promote the use of the emerging technology of multitasking and multiprocessor languages and systems.