This two page spread appears in the 1982 book Health and Medicine (World of Tomorrow).
Patients visiting a doctor in the future first tell the doctor's computer what is wrong with them. The computer may provide a remedy, or tell the patient to go to the next sections to be tested or to give samples. The doctor sees patients who need personal attention.
I can't help but think of a scene in Idiocracy when looking at this image.
See also:
Health Care in 1994 (1973)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 5, 1993)
Hubert H. Humphrey's Future (1967)
This was definitely written in the days before managed care or serious efforts at cost containment. I can just imagine how a patient would react to a piece of computer hardware as a barrier between them and the doctor.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, it's not too far off from what most HMOs and insurance companies do with their advice lines. Granted, it's usually not a computer directly interacting with patients but a call center representative using a software flowchart, but still.