Keeping track of patient records posed a challenge in the years beforeelaborate computer programs with fancy spreadsheets.

        But things got easier in 1960, when Dr. Robert J. Kalthoff, then a Cincinnati-based psychiatrist, developed one of the first automated document storage and retrieval systems, based on his extensive research on how the brain stores memory.

        Dr. Kalthoff, former assistant clinical professor in the psychiatry department at the University of Cincinnati's College of Medicine, died Aug. 30 at the family summer home in Port Huron, Mich. The longtime Hyde Park resident was 76.

        “He was a Renaissance man,” said his daughter, Nan McKenzie of Washington D.C.

        “He was able to take different skills and apply them to different areas of his life.”

        Besides being a successful psychiatrist and entrepreneur, Dr. Kalthoff was an accomplished pianist and choral conductor who, during medical school, spent a year studying choral conducting at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

        Raised in Detroit, Dr. Kalthoff was sponsored by the U.S. Navy to attended Marquette University Medical School in Milwaukee, where he earned a medical degree in 1948.

        Two years later, he entered the U.S. Air Force and was stationed in Puerto Rico. Honorably discharged as a captain in 1954, he returned to Detroit and began his medical internship at Harper Hospital.

        He completed his residency training in neurology and psychiatry at City Hospital in New York before moving to Cincinnati in 1955 for a psychiatry residency at Cincinnati General Hospital (now University Hospital), where he became chief resident of the department.

        Dr. Kalthoff served as a clinical professor in the psychiatry department at the University of Cincinnati's College of Medicine until 1975.

        He also had a private practice in Clifton until the late 1960s.

        Along with his colleague, Dr. Paul Ornstein, Dr. Kalthoff in 1960 developed and patented the original concepts for an automated document storage and retrieval system in 1960.

        In 1963, he raised $9 million in capital to start Access Corp. in Blue Ash to manufacture and sell the system. He served as president of Access until the mid-1980s. (He served as president of the company's board until 1997.).

        He authored more than 100 internationally published papers on micrographics and record automation.

        A book he co-authored, Productivity and Records Automation, published by Prentice-Hall, won the International Award as book-of-the-year in 1982.

        In 1992, he earned the Association of Information and Image Management (AIIM) Carl E. Nelson Award for excellence in engineering information management. He was named to the AIIM International Company of Fellows in 1995.

        A member of the Literary Club since 1967, Dr. Kalthoff was a great supporter of the arts.

        His wife, Nancy Kalthoff, preceded him in death in 1994.

        In addition to his daughter, survivors include another daughter, Janine of Alexandria, Va.; three sons, R. Michael of Amberly Village, Stephen of Burke, Va., and Timothy John of Mount Healthy; and seven grandchildren.

        Services have been held.

        Burial was in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Montgomery.

        Memorials: University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, 2624 Clifton Ave., Cincinnati 45221.

Frailey braces for move to CPS
Frailey's arrival eagerly awaited
Crime falls, jitters intensify in airport vigilance
Cries of anguish, hymns of hope
Church builds 'A Tower of Hope'
Special services focus on healing, hope - and even on forgiveness
Tristate events mark Sept. 11
Three wrecks, two deaths
Carroll: Cash in on casinos
For a few days, all are German
Obituary: Dr. Robert Kalthoff built data tracker
Test exposes leaders' types
Tristate A.M. Report
BRONSON: Men only
CROWLEY: Mudslinging
HOWARD: Some Good News
PULFER: A special empathy
SMITH AMOS: Twitty case
Bristol's dancer guilty of prostitution
Prepaid tuition plan finds itself in the red
Chapman hid knife in his shoe