[Memorial speech: historical retrospect of the development of clinical pathology in Japan for these 40 years].
The speaker who had been appointed professor at the department of clinical pathology in 1951 (which was the first one established in medical schools in Japan) told the development of this medical science retrospectively in Asahikawa, Hokkaido (1991). At the start (1950s) clinical pathology was not readily accepted as an educational unit in medical schools because of reasonless misunderstanding by anatomical pathologists and traditional clinicians. However, later (1970s) it became favored by practical physicians under the leadership of the Japan Medical Association. This situation caused foundation of central clinical laboratories and department of clinical pathology in medical schools. In 1980s cooperative participation of the personnel of engineering sciences in clinical pathology brought rapid progress of test techniques, such as various automatic procedures. In the mean time, the central laboratories are being transformed into a factory equipped with versatile automatic instruments, and expending money for its investment which is too much a hospital can afford. As a result many of the clinical tests are prone to be ordered to the clinical laboratory centers outside the hospital. In this way too many and too much tests are served without meticulous attention of diagnostic and cost effectiveness. To eliminate this wasteful use of tests the speaker proposed the following policy. Laboratory tests should be selected in a small number carefully on the basis of diagnostic and cost effectiveness so that they may be ordered to the laboratory in sets to facilitate clinical laboratory interpretation by use of a computer (CALD) which prints out the possible disease groups relevant to each patient on a report sheet.
Shibata
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Educational Museum of Modern Medicine, Kawasaki Medical School, Kurashiki.
D019411:Clinical Laboratory Techniques; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D010338:Pathology, Clinical / Q000266:history*