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by kelnos 745 days ago
> Companies that don't take false positives seriously are inherently dangerous.

Alarms with incessant false positives are inherently dangerous. Sure, there's some threshold of false positives, under which we should still expect people to investigate all alarms. But above that threshold, how can we continue to blame the people involved? The hardware is at fault.

2 comments

Please propose a design for better hardware then. You'll make a fortune and do a lot of good in the process.

Seriously, what would motivate you to make a comment like that? Do you think medical device engineers and clinicians are unaware of the false alarm issue and haven't already tried a variety of improvements? There is an inherent trade-off between false alarms and missing a real problem. And devices need to be not only accurate but also affordable, durable, and cost effective. It's not easy to get this right.

I think GP was talking about the people who don’t try to reduce false positives (by actively searching for solutions to reduce them), not the ones ignoring them because they are used to.