Design of the diagnostic encyclopedia workstation (DEW).

The Diagnostic Encyclopedia Workstation (DEW) contains reference knowledge for diagnostic support in pathology. Illustrations are accessible via a video disc device. DEW can hold more knowledge, pictures and case histories than books, and its information is accessible via several entries. Software for data entry has been written in MUMPS with use of the relational database toolkit AIDA, which is particularly suited for manipulation of free text. The graphical mouse-driven user interface is written in C using MetaWindows. The DEW contains 85 diagnoses in ovarian pathology, covering all frequent cases and many rarities, illustrated by approximately 3000 pictures, divided among 158 cases.