"Open Source Medical Devices: When code can kill or cure"
Mon, 2012-09-03 09:10 — dgreis
I thought this piece from The Economist did a good job of tying two of our readings together from the last lecture. The article explains that as medical devices have grown more capable, they have also grown more complex. With increasing complexity comes an increased potential for something to go wrong. However, the "resources" these devices manage aren't stuffed animals in a natural history museum--they are biometric data where a software bug in a device that accidentally delivers an overdose of chemotherapy can result in the death of a patient.
Some critics lament the lack of safety culture present in the medical device industry. As a reform measure, the article describes a push for an "open source overhaul" of the medical device industry. Proponents of such an overhaul make an argument similar to that of the Propylon reading from last week. In essence, they argue it would be safer and more useful for medical devices to deal with biometric data more openly rather than being "locked into" proprietary formats developed by manufacturers.
Who knows? With open source coding for medical devices, we might achieve a level of utility and user-friendliness that could avert the often painful adoption of new medical information technology outlined by the McGrath/Murray paper.
http://www.economist.com/node/21556098
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