Enclosure 3

Status Report on the ACME System

October 3, 1966

The program is roughly on the same schedule as predicated in enclosure l.
However, IBM has announced several delays in hardware components and in
operating system software for which we cannot fully compensate by our own
efforts.

We moy therefore expect to have the conmouter onerabional by January 1, 1967,
for renote terminal access and some specialized laboratory inputs. However
routine data lines will probably be delayed three or four months.

3

The 1800 computer has been delivered and is being checked out. The larger
360-50 system is in shipment at this writing.

An excellent nucleus of programming staff has been assembled under Me. Wiedernold's
direction and they have already done outstanding work in designing the time-
sharing system,which promises to be of wide application at many installations.
Applications programming has lagged, however, partly on account of incomplete
funding, but we are ready to begin with this on short notice.

A Clinical Application Committee has been organized under the direction of

r. Peter Rosenbaum (Associate Professor of Psychiatry). It is studying the

ays in which the computer facility can be used to help the management of prob-
lems in the clinics end on the wards. We are paying particular attention to the
system proposals that the Lockheed Corporation is putting together, some announce-
ment of which in connection with the Mayo Foundation you may already have seen.

xo

Until she studies of this committee and the needed effort in self and muvu
education have been completed, the main emphasis of the ACME system will be on
the manegenent of laboratory research information, and in the education of
medical and graduate students in the use of this tool.