Man in uniform types on vintage computer terminal.

Lieutenant Commander R.A. Payton modifies a computer program using a cathode-ray-tube conversational terminal at the Naval Medical Data Services Center, Bethesda, Maryland, 1974. Naval pharmacists were Navy medicine's earliest information managers. As supply, fiscal, property and food service managers, they initially relied on mechanical and electronic calculating devices for information management. With introduction of automated data processing (ADP) in the 1950s, information management technology revolutionized health care delivery systems.