[stephengillie]

In software development and system administration - automation, variables, and copy-paste (instead of retyping) can be used to remove the possibility for human error to occur. Instead of seeing the number "0x80007003" and accidentally retyping it as "0x80070003", we can just copy it, and paste it into the other system. Or have the systems talk to each other and take us out of the loop.

How do we remove opportunities for human error in medicine and health care?

[logfromblammo]

I worked for a medical software company for a couple of years a little while ago. One of the major ingredients in the mandatory corporate beverage was the concept of "patient safety".

As a severe simplification, you can think of the transition from older medical processes to newer ones as like pulling all the string parameters, string parsing, and string building out of old code and replacing it with strictly typed data. In doing so, you remove all errors generated by improperly formatted strings.

That, and barcoding every damned thing in the hospital.

For instance, you barcode the patient's wrist tag, and you barcode everything going out of the hospital pharmacy. When the nurses go into a room to administer a patient's meds, they scan the patient, and scan the medication. The scanner bleeps either a "yes, proceed" or a "WHOA WHOA WHOA, RIGHT THERE! WRONG MED OR WRONG PATIENT!"

That last measure alone saves thousands of lives every year.[0]

[0] This statistic is entirely made up, but sounds about right.[1]

[1] Fine. Sort through it yourself. This ought to get you started:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...

https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...