Instant Checkup

Hello there. First, we need to ask some questions about you and your medical history. How old are you? Has your mother or any sister ever had breast cancer? Do you exercise continuously so that you have to breathe very fast for more than 20 minutes at least once a week? Have you felt unusually tired, even though you are getting enough sleep?

These are questions that might have been asked by a doctor during a routine physical checkup. But they were not; they came from a computer. In the past few months, some 500 people have been "examined" by an electronic brain at the University of Wisconsin's Center for Health Sciences in Madison. The computer does not diagnose ailments or prescribe pills, but it comes close. After analyzing the patients' answers, and confessing a few limitations of its own ("Pardon me a few minutes while I compute"), it calculates their chances for good health and long life. It also tells how to improve those odds.

During her half-hour electronic checkup, TIME Correspondent Anne Constable, 31, answered some 70 multiple-choice questions about everything from her family medical history and cultural background to her state of mind ("Have you ever seriously thought of ending your life?"). She was then advised that her statistical risk of dying within the next decade was 1,301 in 100,000. These precise odds, based on actuarial tables and clinical data stored away in the computer's memory banks, were just a fraction above those for the average white woman in the 30-to-34-year age group. Why was this healthy, five-times-a-week tennis and racquet ball enthusiast a slightly higher risk? Because, explained the computer, she sometimes drank, smoked cigarettes and, most risky of all, did not always buckle up her seat belt while driving. "If you make all the possible reductions in your risk factors," she was told, "you will then have the same risk as an average person of 26.5 [843 in 100,000]."

This no-nonsense "doctor" is the brainchild of Dr. Norman Jensen, director of adult medicine at Madison's University of Wisconsin Hospitals, and his colleague, Larry Van Cura, a computer specialist. What distinguishes it from other diagnostic computers is that it allows a direct dialogue between patient and machine and, math whiz that it is, delivers an almost instant assessment of health risks. Jensen also sees the inexpensive computerized checkup ($10) as an alternative to costly annual physicals. For those under 40 who show no signs of ill health, an increasing number of physicians are no longer recommending such examinations (TIME, July 26). Still, Jensen feels, even members of this age group should be warned of bad health habits that could mean trouble later in their lives. That the computer can do. The only prior physical measurements it needs are height, weight, blood pressure and serum cholesterol, which can easily be taken by a technician rather than a doctor. Adds Jensen: "I believe people will make significant changes just based on awareness."

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