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AUG 16°
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE
PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
BETHESDA, MARYLAND 20014
August 10, 1971 NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE

LHNCBC

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics
Department of Genetics
Stanford University

School of Medicine

Palo Alto, California 94304

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

The Association of American Medical Colleges, in a report to be published

as Part 2 of the July 1971 issue of the Journal of Medical Education,
recommended that the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications
support a clearninghouse or information center on biomedical computer
programs. The activities of such a center could range from collecting
information about available programs to collecting, validating, re-formatting,
copying and distributing actual programs, as NASA's COSMIC center at the
University of Georgia does for scientific and engineering programs.

 

The Advanced Research Projects Agency has shown the feasibility of linking
dissimilar computers together with high speed communication channels and
making it possible to exchange programs and manipulate data bases among
the computers in the network.

The Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications has been

given rather broad responsibilities in the areas of biomedical communication
systems and networks. Either or both of these projects--the information
center or the network--could be interpreted as being within our intellectual,
if not financial, scope. Both seem technically feasible. But before we

can proceed with our planning we need help from potential users and members.
Would you, or your computer center, be interested in:

(a) Participating in a clearinghouse/information center on biomedical
computer programs, possibly even to the extent of running it?

(b) Becoming part of an ARPA-type biomedical computer network?

(c) If (b), are any of your present or planned computers capable of
operating in the time-sharing mode?

I'm sending these letters primarily to principal investigators on BRB
active computer grants. If you're interested, I'll be glad to send you
a summary of the answers I get, keeping the correspondents anonymous.

_Singesaty,
= SKK, Zech, 4, az lie

at “Wooster, Ph. $.
Chief, Research & sevelopnent