History of Nursing Informatics

during the 1970’s

Submitted by:
Advincula, Citadel
Carbonilla, Monica
Jance, Giosyl
Perez, Zerah
Pregua, Delfa Mae
GROUP 3 - BSN 2D
During the 1970s period:

Nurses began to see the value of computers in the profession:

1. Documentation of nursing practice

2. Quality of patient care
3. Repetitive aspects of managing patient care

The first conference on nursing and computers was held in the 1970's in the U.S. while
informatics papers specific to nursing first appeared on the international level at MEDINFO in
1974, authored by nurses in the U.K. and U.S.

Nursing stations were studied and identified to be central to patient care and deemed
fundamental in the creation of health information systems (HIS) (Saba, 2001). The adoption of
some of the first HIS and Electronic Medical Records (EMR) occurred in the 1970's (Thede,
2012).

By 1974 the first nursing informatics papers were presented at the Medical Informatics
Conference in Sweden (Saba, 2001). Five papers were presented on a variety of topics
including: general description of informatics impact, computer education of health care
workers, the design of nursing care protocols for hospital information systems (HIS), advancing
real-time cardiac monitors, and computerized medication systems (Saba, 2001).

Also, computers are perceived as cost-saving technologies and computer-based MIS in public
health has developed for statistical purposes. Other significant events that have taken a part on
the development of Nursing Informatics at this time period.

The 70s was the decade technology really became consumer technology. Invention that was
birthed in the 50s and 60s became products to fill store shelves and catalogues in the 70s.
1) Floppy Disk

The floppy disk may be a largely obsolete technology at this point but its legacy is huge.
This very article is being written in Microsoft Word and the document has been saved by
clicking that floppy disk symbol in the top left corner. We’re not using floppy disks
anymore but we haven’t forgotten about them.
The first commercially sold floppy disks hit the market in the early 70s, sold by IBM and
Memorex and were 8” in diameter. IBM initially labelled the product as a Type 1
Diskette but the term floppy disk caught on in the press and thus it was christened so for
decades to come.
It was then in the mid to late 70s that the floppy disk format started to shrink in size.
Now-defunct computer maker Shugart Associates, led by Alan Shugart who previously
worked on the disk storage at IBM and Memorex, released a 5¼” version and the
product came down in price even if the disks could only hold about 90 to 100 KB of data.
By the late 1970s, Apple had released its own floppys that boasted 256 KB of data
storage and in 1978, Tandon released a double-sided floppy disk that could hold 360 KB
but it wasn’t until the ‘80s that we were introduced to the 3½” floppy disk that we all
know and love.
However, the ability to write data to an external disk was truly transformative. Moving
data so easily, even just via hardware like USB or external hard drive, is something we
take for granted now but the opportunities presented by the floppy disk format were
staggering, even if the amounts of data we’re talking about here are miniscule by
today’s standards.

2) The All-In-One Personal Computer

The history of advances in computing goes back decades, but personal computers or
“microcomputers,” didn’t get their first boom until the 1970s. The original Apple I was birthed
in Steve Wozniak’s garage, based on what he was learning and experimenting with at the
Homebrewer Computer Club in Palo Alto, California. It was in this club of enthusiasts that the
personal computer would move from hobby to product

The Apple I sold 200 units in 1976, the first successfully marketed personal computer was the
Commodore PET, a computer that was adopted in both Canada and the United States.
Commodore was just another calculator company in the early 1970s until its lead electrical
engineer got shown a prototype of the Apple II by the Steves of Apple.

3) The Cell Phone

Many people called it a “brick phone” thanks to its resemblance to a standard, clay-fired brick
and over the years it became something of a comedy prop, a way for us to measure how far
we’ve come by looking at the apparent silliness of the first attempt.

But, in 1973 when Motorola engineer, executive and “Father of the Cell Phone” Martin Cooper
made the first truly mobile cellular phone call with the DynaTAC prototype walking down Sixth
Avenue in New York City, the moment was far from silly. It was as monumental as Steve Jobs on
stage at Moscone West in 2007, when Apple reinvented the phone.

4) The VCR
Methods for recording television existed before the 70s, but were very expensive, were
technologically complex, and different solutions used different, non-compatible tape formats.
The technology in Videocassette Recorders (VCR’s) was highly mechanical, and even in their
latter years, VCRs weren’t much smaller than a briefcase. It wasn’t until the mid-70s that VCRs
manufactured by Japanese firms were made reliable and affordable. Once they started entering
people’s homes, they fundamentally changed the way people consumed both television and
movies.

5) Digital Wristwatches
Today, digital timekeeping is everywhere. It’s built into displays on our cell phones, stoves, and
cars. However, when the first Light Emitting Diode (LED) digital wristwatch was launched in
1970 almost everyone was still telling time on analog clock faces with hour and minute hands.
The quick rise in popularity of digital wristwatches changed the way we told time.

The Hamilton Watch Company released the gold Pulsar watch with red LED display. The
prototype had been seen two years earliere in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but
you’d be forgiven for missing it amongst all the other “21st century” technology. It was seen
again as spy gear in the James Bond flick, Live and Let Die. However, by the mid-70s, Texas
Instruments had started selling cheap digital watches for under $20 and it quickly eroded the
premium status of digital watches. Now anyone could have this futuristic-looking technology on
their wrist.