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To all Biomch-L readers.
Here in Belfast, Northern Ireland, we are in the process of setting up
a Gait Analysis Laboratory, based at Musgrave Park Hospital which is
the regional Orthopaedic Hospital for the North of Ireland. It is a
joint venture with support from charitable institutions, the University,
(Queens University of Belfast) and the regional health authority.
After some debate it was decided to opt for the VICON system as supplied
by Oxford Metrics, Botley in England. Initially it will be a small
network based on a MicroVAX 3100 (Model 40) acting as a server with two
486 PC being used as intelligent workstations as well as stand alone.
Hardcopy will be from a HP Ljet III with 2Mb xtra RAM. We hope (fingers
crossed) to be going live by June 25th. Funding permitting we then hope
to link into the hospital LAN (and hence onto the health authority WAN)
and then bridge to the University mainframe. We anticipate spending the
summer months "getting to grips" with the hardware and software so that
by the autumn (Fall) we would hope to have a competent working laboratory.
For the past few months I have been downloading useful material from
BIOMCH-L to my word processor and distributing it to the various
people working on the project, surgeons, physicians, engineers etc.
Of particular interest has been the recent debate on the standardisation
of kinematic data, which will be of crucial importance to us when we are
set up. Furthermore since many surgeons do not have ready access to
computers linked to networks or simply do not wish to, developing a
forum such as BIOMCH-L is very important in encouraging their use of
information technology as well as acting as a rapid medium in which to
develop ideas, debate common interests etc in a far better way than can
be done by learned journals. Some of my previous comments have been
recently incorporated into the BIOMCH-L fileserver.
I would welcome any comments or critisms from my fellow readership either
thru' the BIOMCH-L forum or Email me direct. Of particular interest
would be experiences gained in setting up such a lab. I am an
"Information Technologist" which means i have to have fingers in both
hardware and software pies. Experiences gained in other areas such as
patient management would be gratefully passed on to the clinicians.
Many thanks in advance for your valuable time.
Joseph (Joe) Murphy
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
The Queen's University of Belfast
Musgrave Park Hospital
BELFAST BT9 7JB
Northern Ireland
Email: JOSEPH.MURPHY
Phone: +44 232 669501 ext 2823
Fax: +44 232 661112