Implementation of attractive dialogues in nutritive analysis and clinical dietetics information systems.

The implementation and evaluation of a system providing both extensive nutritive-analysis calculations and interactive capabilities are described. The extensive calculating ability of the system arose from the historic need for nutrient intake estimates in clinical investigation and nutritional research. The availability of computer-aided instruction (CAI) system software lead to adoption of the interactive style originating at Ohio State University. Capabilities evolved into an extended interactive processor utilizing an extensive data-base. The interactive processor functions either directly, for immediate response, or as a preprocessor for the more extensive processing system. Use of this capability by a dietetics consortium in the Pacific North-west has lead to definitions of effective and desirable styles of interaction by dietitians with a food and nutrient data-base. Hosting the PILOT CAI language with a high-level language, SAIL, allowed convenient and flexible dialogue creation as well as computational power. The central data-base was restructured on two occasions to accommodate the required characteristics for foods and their nutrients. The lack of interfaces between medical-information packages, and between languages, presently limits the growth of this system into a fully integrated component of the health-care information domain.