More recently, practicing primary care pediatricians such as Burtis Breese and William Carey contributed a body of knowledge on child health.
They each wondered about their patients, developed means of gathering and recording data, and found collaborators and support from their staff and local communities.
They attracted funding from medical schools, national philanthropic foundations and federal programs such as Health for Underserved Rural Areas.
As the 1970s closed, these early networks enjoyed sufficient success to stimulate debate about the next steps in the context of the microcomputer's development.
Among them was a small group convened by Gene Farley in Denver in 1978 to consider establishing a national sentinel practice system.
It was this idea that lead to the Ambulatory Sentinel Practice Network and provided in retrospect what appears to have been a nidus for the establishment of primary care PBRNs in the United States.