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From: jwb@ecsvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: computer ECG, FDA testing of AI programs
Message-ID: <2140@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Mar-84 10:47:10 EST
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.2140
Posted: Fri Mar  9 10:47:10 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Mar-84 12:38:30 EST
References: sri-arpa.17229
Lines: 27

An extract of a previous submission by me mentioned the overreading of an
ECG interpretation by a cardiologist.  What I meant (and what was not clear)
is that the cardiologist is looking at the raw ECG, not the output of the
computer (although a lot of preprocessing is often done which is hidden
from the cardiologist--this is another different problem--at least it looks
like what you would get from a standard ECG machine).  On a related issue,
medical decisions regarding the treatment of an individual patient *have* to
be made by the local physician treating the patient (at least that is long
standing medical practice and opinion).  The overreading offered by the
remote services is a look at the reconstructed input ECG by a Board
Certified Cardiologist and is intended to be analagous to a "consultation"
by a more experienced and/or specialized physician.  The name of the service
is Telemed, not Telenet as I incorrectly typed.  Committees of the American
Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology are attempting to
set standards for computer (and human) interpretation of ECG's.  A snag is
that different preprocessing of the ECG's by different manufacturers makes
it rather uneconomical to acquire a large number os "standard" ECG's in
machine readable form.  I think the FDA is looking at all this and I think
under current law they can step in at their whim.  So far they seem to be
waiting for the above groups to present standards (since they don't seem to
have the resources to even start to develop them within the FDA).

	Jack Buchanan
	Cardiology and Biomedical Engineering
	UNC-Chapel Hill
	Chapel Hill NC
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