WHERE HAVE ALL THE NURSES GONE?

INTRODUCTION

The first draft of this story was written in the summer of 1991. The aim has been to explore the fact and fiction of virtual reality (VR) technology, as it is applied currently and may in future when use of VR becomes common place. I have tried to emphasize technology, ideas and issues, and not plot or the development of characters and other ‘literary’ aspects. Despite this I hope that if you don’t know much about VR, then you should know more after investing time here, especially from the bibliographic sources listed at the end. There are several main types of VR systems, each requiring different input and output devices. The system envisioned here is probably best (?) described as IMMERSIVE VR. Others include:

DESKTOP VR: 'Fishbowl' VR - using the computer monitor to portray a 3-D space.
AUGMENTED REALITY SYSTEMS: (What is happening on Mars?)
PROJECTION SYSTEMS OR CAVES: (Computer Assisted Virtual Environments)

The influences for this work are so many and span several years. They include radio, TV documentaries such as: ‘Equinox’, ‘Horizon', The Independent, Computer Guardian, various computer magazines (especially BYTE; PCW), journals (IEE; BCS and many others), cinema (’Tron;’ ‘Lawnmower Man;') science fiction and non-fiction. The idea of volumetric (or virtual) health / nursing assessment (VHA) was stimulated by Brian Hodge's work on the Health Career Model. Please visit the pages and let us know what you think. A reference to Brian's work is also provided - see Hinchcliffe.

As to the story itself - the names ‘Alsing’ and ‘West’ are stolen from Tracy Kidder’s (1983) ‘The Soul of a New Machine’, Penguin. Although ancient in computing terms, it’s still a marvellous read, about the human side of building a new computer. If time allowed I would like to turn this story into a multimedia book. It could have a more serious side, a hypertext glossary expanding on terms and concepts in the text. Perhaps there is an on-line project there for people to contribute and develop? Graphics could be used to potentially excellent effect to help convey many of the ideas expressed here and elsewhere in the bibliography.

Before I close - if you are not already a member - have you thought of joining the British Computer Society - BCS Nursing Specialist Group?

Happy reading...

and of course - all characters portrayed are fictitious.

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Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Val Tarrant and Gerry Hogbin for their very helpful comments and corrections on early drafts. All trademarks etc., are acknowledged. (Read Codes) and (Unified Medical Language System - Nat. Insts. of Health, Nat. Lib. of Med. Bethesda, Maryland, 20894,USA).
Having laboured over some small BASIC programs in the 1980's I am all too aware of the issues surrounding copyright. Most of the images used here are part-images (no excuse?) scanned and manipulated from various sources - New Scientist, 1980's issues of OMNI, and other magazines. I also saved images from sales literature for AI software companies, many of these no longer exist. The Florence Nightingale image is from that site; the image of hands holding the sculptured head, is from a trial version of Photoshop 4.0, it did not have a © notice, so .... I have used this and others WITHOUT the express permission of the publishers, in some effort of recompense I would ask readers to please give these sources a try. Other images, (esp. badges) were homemade - thanks to Daniel and Matthew.