Patient/Problem Oriented Medical Record System (PROMIS) Archives

Jan Schultz was a colleague of Larry Weed and the principal software developer and business architect within a team/lab that developed the POMR/PROMIS programming languages, software, hardware, and systems architectures for this early hospital medical records system. was Director of Systems Development for PROMIS Laboratory and a Research Associate in the Department of Medicine as well as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the Engineering, Mathematics and Business Administration College of UVM. He planned, coordinated and implemented the evolution of the PROMIS system through four generations of hardware and software. The PROMIS system was a highly interactive, touch screen system that allowed users to manipulate an electronic medical record within the context of a large body of medical knowledge. PROMIS had over 60,000 frames of knowledge within it. The system was architected so that the same core system used to manage patient data could be used by domain experts to maintain and add new medical knowledge. Schultz designed and implemented a high-level, structured programming language, PPL, in which all PROMIS applications were developed as well as designing and implementing the electronic medical record database application. Many of these activities were funded by the federal government and systems were implemented at both the University of Vermont College of Medicine and their teaching hospital as well as a number of primary care sites. The PROMIS system also provided a foundation for some early hypertext systems and Schultz/Weed spun off several businesses dealing with the management of medical records after leaving UVM. Stuart Graves, M.D. was one the Vermont lab's principal medical domain experts.