[Gnumed-devel] ethical standards for medical software

[Sebastian Hilbert]

Hi !

There are times when I believe software in hospitals kills patients. Well 
maybe not directly and there is no way I can prove it but I know at least two 
people that may still be alive had software vendors applied some ethical 
guidelines to there software. 

I know places where software dictates the medical workflow and leads to 
serious if not fatal complications. Worse is a pseudo paperless environment 
where patients suffer because the important information is put down on paper 
but noone gets to see it or expects it outside the software environment.

What can you do about this ? Don't rely on software, question every 
information the software gives you and refuse to use software that is known 
to support misinformation. You might just save a life or two.

I have been down that road and I am frightened to see patient's life at risk 
every day. Sad thing about it is hardly anyone seems to care.

Good thing about it is that now I make darn sure GNUmed doesn't implement the 
same flaws.
-- 
Sebastian Hilbert 
Leipzig / Germany
[www.gnumed.de]  -> PGP welcome, HTML ->/dev/null