SUMMARY: SPC/PI+ is a powerful statistical software package for use in quality control/improvement programs. Using point-and-click technology, dialog boxes and menu bars, this sophisticated program not only performs routine statistical process analysis and plots basic control charts but also identifies and compensates for common statistical and inherent process variations, such as non-normal data and autocorrelation.

SPC has its most obvious application in manufacturing and related industries. Whether SPC is as applicable to the medical profession is an arguable point defended by most hard line quality assurers and Deming wannabes; if so, SPC/PI+ and Essentials of SPC can offer physicians and administrators top-notch soft-ware upon which to base statistically strong QA/CBI programs.

GENERAL FEATURES: SPC/PI+ features typical Windows toolbar access to statistical analysis; process capability with full capacity reporting; basic and advanced control charts. Users can modify charts and analyses by excluding data-points, setting target values other than the mean and calculating limits over partial ranges, among others.

Helpful software features include the ability to import ASCII and other data from many spreadsheet and data base programs and/or the user can easily enter or remove data on the program's worksheet or graph.

One nice feature is the ability to add text comments and data-point labeling selectively or jointly to worksheets and/or graphs. As with most sophisticated Windows software, there is complete clip-board and DE client/server support allowing for pasting to other applications, in addition to the general ASCII and graphic file export and printing features.

Included with the software is a straightforward, helpful video describing the features of the program in depth. The accompanying manual covers the program in greater detail and complements the on-line help.

Importantly, this program will not help design a medical CBI program and does not offer advanced biostatistics as required for peer-review research.

MAJOR STRONG POINTS: Kudos to Qualitran for creating such a well thought-out Windows-based program! The document format became intuitively clear once I closed the manual and began generating multiple worksheets and charts from a single data base. The program allows for significant chart customization but thoughtfully protects the user from statistically erroneous manipulations that would contaminate data analysis, such as excluding points on moving average or range charts.

Although I cannot comment on the statistical approach or computational power of SPC/PI+ (especially with my yet-to-be-changed Pentium chip), from a software perspective I found this program very solid. If statistics could ever be made fun or even interesting, this is the program to do it.

MAJOR DRAWBACKS: For all its wonderful CAI, its serious video tutorial and its illustrative manuals, SPC is too complicated and easily misapplied a technique to permit approaching SPC/PI+ as a plug-and-play software package. Although one is hard-pressed to imagine a more user-friendly interface or a better introduction to SPC, it is not for the pure statistical or CQI neophyte (to its credit Qualitran doesn't pretend it to be otherwise).

To help rectify this, I wish Qualitran would create a software feature to help design and implement SPC methods one that helps the user through "the four steps" as outlined in the last chapter of Essentials of SPC. A feature similar to Microsoft's Wizard and Cue Card would provide the needed framework upon which to conduct data collection and analysis in a QA/process control fashion. I don't imagine such a feature would detract from the consulting service.

Significantly, neither this program nor its supplemental information offers insight into the medical industry's use of SPC. It's easy to imagine how SPC/PI+ can help a physician group monitor patient flow (such as statistically significant changes in the number of patient walk-outs, admissions or referral patterns). Yet applicability to the core of medical practice is less clear. For example, I don't think there's enough biostatisical power in SPC/PI+ to identify variables associated with a group practice's misdiagnoses of myocardial infarctions, and I'm not certain if SPC, much less SPC/PI+, can be used to continuously monitor the occurrence of these variables or misdiagnoses.

I hope Qualitran chooses to market this product to the medical community. If so, I'd recommend supplementing the program with advanced biostatistics and providing instructional features, software or text to help customers apply SPC to their medical care. Even Deming wouldn't be so purist as to approach ill patients as one does sharpened pencils, unless all he was doing was measuring their heights.

INTENDED USER: Engineers, technical people and supervisors responsible for quality control or looking for basic SPC instruction; I would add physicians and medical administrators specifically seeking an SPC computer program for their medical CQI program.

COMMENTS: Searching for medical CQI software was like searching for Bobby Fisher: rumors of sightings abound, but after 18 months nothing was definitely located other than this program (which is hardly medical CBI software).

Physicians and medical administrators looking for assistance with their group practice or department CQI program appear at present to have three alternatives: use one of several large medical operating systems that satisfy many medical computing needs, including CQI, but which require a significant technologic and financial investment; hire a consulting company to collate and statistically analyze their patient data, or design one's own CQI program starting with existing software such as SPC/PI+ or from scratch.

It seems to me creating a fully functional medical CQI package is no more difficult than combining a strong text search program with a powerful statistical package such as this one, personalized to include common medical CQI study and quality indicator formats, and data analysis forms. I can't understand why I haven't found a software company that's developed or marketed such a product.