The first reading of an electrocardiogram

The first program to read an electrocardiogram was written at the National Institutes of Health in the early nineteen sixties, and by the end of the seventies the interpretation was coming out of the machine on the same paper as the tracing. Of the millions of electrocardiograms recorded every year, the majority are now analysed automatically and carry a machine statement before any physician sees them. Intervals, rate and axis are no longer measured by hand anywhere. This is the oldest and quietest delegation in medicine, and the accuracy never justified it: a 1991 comparison in the New England Journal of Medicine found the programs behind the cardiologists, and the warning against accepting the printed statement has been repeated ever since. What stayed human is the overread and the decision that follows it.