Back to BASIC
I once read an article about a BASIC program used to temperature-correct arterial blood gas results. This was in the day when a program could be "keyed in" from a magazine. BASIC, which stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, was quick, versatile, and loaded on nearly all computers. You may remember this:
10 CLS
20 PRINT "Hello World!"
BASIC is an interpreted language, meaning that instructions are read and executed on the fly. It is thus limited by its interpreter, which usually requires that programs be written in a way that makes them nearly unreadable. BASIC programs contain sequential line numbers (the 10 and 20 above), limitations on variable names, obscure GOTO and GOSUB statements, and other quirks. BASIC programs, often "spaghetti code," were devilishly difficult to debug.
But in the day, it was cool stuff. All laboratory statistics and even graph generators could be programmed in BASIC, and its decision branching made it possible to create interpreted, customized reports. It didn't take a great programmer to code in BASIC. Even artificial intelligence seemed around the corner. At a time when many labs were still hand-writing results on carbon-copy slips, this showed promise.
Was this promise a fairy tale?
Information systems are now ubiquitous in laboratories as integrated systems, instrument data managers, and middleware. Many include some capability to program calculations limited by software design. CPSI, for instance, does not include "If-then" statements, which makes conditional calculations cumbersome to program. But some onboard data managers make limited decisions i.e. automated microbiology systems. I don't remember seeing a side-by-side comparison, but it would interest me as a programmer. It should be considered when purchasing a system.
There is tremendous potential to develop expert systems that translate all by rote decisions, from true autoverification to antibody identification, but I wonder how close we are and how well what we have works. Once upon a time, it all seemed so BASIC.