Reply to post: Poor requirements and the medical ego

Medicos could be world's best security bypassers, study finds

Lotaresco

Poor requirements and the medical ego

When Apple brought out the second generation iPads medics were screaming at IT Staff that they needed WiFi throughout the hospital to support their BYOD devices or Patients Would Die. This was of course drivel and made worse by the desire of medics to put sensitive patient data onto their own devices.

Using patient deaths as a stick to beat IT staff is standard. Having been a medical researcher before I became an IT bod I was able to tell them where to get off. Most IT Staff have neither the knowledge not the confidence to stand up to this blackmail.

On the other side of the coin, I've watched medical staff having to juggle light pen, mouse, bar code reader and keyboard just to request clinical chemistry tests. This is clearly down to poor requirements gathering as well as cynical provision from third party suppliers - the school of "Oh it will do". It should be clear when gathering requirements for IT systems (or doing that stupid Agile thing) that speed of access to the system and to patient data should be a priority and this can be quantified. There then needs to be the usual risk-based decision on how to achieve an appropriate trade off. People leave systems logged in as much because of ignorance of the risks as for instant access to data. The instant access and "patients will die" arguments are usually post hoc to justify bad behaviour.

If it's a real medical emergency no one in their right mind will be thinking of tapping at the keys on a computer instead of dealing with the emergency. Stat tests are usually achieved by planning ERs so that the laboratory is close to the ER and information/samples transferred by sneakernet. What's the point of having instant access to results if it takes significant time to get the samples to the lab? Who, in an emergency, has the time to carefully read through the patient's medical history? Which is why emergency procedures don't rely on going to look up "how to deal with an embolism" on Wikipedia, for example.

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