In a medical image filing apparatus having a store unit, a keyboard, a retrieval device, a display unit and a CPU, case images of various diseases are stored in the store unit together with clinical images, and case indexes corresponding to respective case images and clinical indexes corresponding to respective clinical images are also stored in the store unit. Therefore, the retrieval operation of the case images as well as the clinical images can be effected in an easy and swift manner, and thus it is possible to effect an accurate diagnosis for a patient.

A method is provided for operating a computer system to automatically provide a utility program with data contained in a data base. The method uses extended character set tokens representing data identification which are initially placed into data memory locations in the utility program and thereafter replaced with the designated data from the data bank.

An information recording-reproducing method of recording information from a plurality of information sources on a recording medium and reproducing the information is characterized by dividing the information from each information source into a plurality, recording the divided information from the first information source along the signal tracks of the recording medium at predetermined intervals, recording the divided information from the other information sources between recording areas in which the divided information from the first information source is recorded, and reproducing the information along the signal tracks.

A multiple document assembly data processing system allows a user to pick and assemble numerous documents (or files) while collecting required variable field information for each of the documents and eliminating duplicate information. The system enables a user in a single data entry operation to prepare each of the documents at substantially the same time by distributing information entered to all the selected documents or files. The system is an interactive, menu-driven system which uses prompt windows in which, for example, documents are selected and entry formats are presented to prompt a user to enter common variable information relating to numerous documents. The documents are stored in a library which is organized into a series of volumes. Each volume is broken down further into a series of chapters. Each chapter, in turn, may store a series of specific documents. Each of the documents includes a series of field names that are required to have data inserted therein to complete the document. Each of these stored documents may be revised, edited, and manipulated in accordance with a conventional word processing system which is resident in the system.

A medium issuing method comprises storing the issue data items corresponding to mediums each of which has a memory area, specifying one or more of the issue data items, reading the specified issue data items from the stored data step, and writing the read issue data items into the memory areas of the mediums.