CT Scan "Reset Error" Gives 206 Patients Radiation Overdose 383
jeffb (2.718) writes "As the LA Times reports, 206 patients receiving CT scans at Cedar Sinai hospital received up to eight times the X-ray exposure doctors intended. (The FDA alert gives details about the doses involved.) A misunderstanding over an 'embedded default setting' appears to have led to the error, which occurred when the hospital 'began using a new protocol for a specialized type of scan used to diagnose strokes. Doctors believed it would provide them more useful data to analyze disruptions in the flow of blood to brain tissue.' Human-computer interaction classes from the late 1980s onward have pounded home the lesson of the Therac-25, the usability issues of which led to multiple deaths. Will we ever learn enough to make these errors truly uncommittable?"
Not the engineers fault (Score:5, Funny)
HULK MAD! (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone else read this as David Banner?
Re:Default setting... (Score:5, Funny)
All I'm saying here is we shouldn't just dismiss this as a bad thing until we've fully explored the legislative and societal implications a team of crime-fighting mutants with superpowers would have.
Meh... (Score:2, Funny)
What's a few hundred rem among friends?
Re:Will errors ever go away? (Score:5, Funny)
The machine didn't build itself!
SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, MEATSACK!
Oh great (Score:3, Funny)
Now there are 206 hulks running around.
Just don't make them angry.
Re:Will errors ever go away? (Score:5, Funny)
The machine didn't build itself!
SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, MEATSACK!
Oh, yeah?! Well who built your first model, you bucket o' bolts! And don't give me that FSM nonsense. Everyone knows that the Fantastical Spawning Machine was truly the work of humans, inspired by the intelligently designed schematics given to us by the noodley appendage of the true FSM.
Re:Will errors ever go away? (Score:5, Funny)
SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, MEATSACK!
Scanning with high intensity radiation reveals he is in fact about 60 percent water, 16 percent protein, 15 percent fat, and about 3 percent nitrogen... So, more of a stringy, greasy, slightly gassy water bag really.
Sorry about the high levels of radiation used to obtain the data, your armpits should stop smoking any minute now.
Add a dialog box... (Score:3, Funny)
That pops up for the operator to respond to....
Are you sure you want to kill this patient?
Yes No Retry
Re:Not the engineers fault (Score:5, Funny)
I see you are about to fry this patient like an egg (doseage set for multiples of normal protocol)
would you like me to
1 reset the machine to standard defaults
2 book you a flight to africa
3 call your lawyer now
4 forge the documents to show %person% did the treatment
or
You Are about to kill this patient [cancel] or [allow]
Re:Not the engineers fault (Score:4, Funny)
Bet you can't circumvent that with just duct tape. Now, with an Arduino, some peripheral hardware and a few spare evenings....
Re:Will errors ever go away? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not the engineers fault (Score:3, Funny)
One of the system admins at school was trying out the latest and greatest such beast in his office before deploying it and thought it was a good idea to program F1 to send his userid and password. He also thought that the terminal would not retain the memory when he unplugged it to deploy the device to the public terminal room.
He learned that two stupid thoughts can be much worse than one stupid standalone thought.
Re:Oh great (Score:3, Funny)
Must have heard wrong... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's About Automation (Score:4, Funny)
Was that before or after your car hit the bottom of the ravine?
Re:It's About Automation (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's About Automation (Score:3, Funny)
Jesus, what must your code look like?