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This book tells stories of widespread problems with digital healthcare. The stories inspire and challenge anyone who wants to make hospitals and healthcare better. The stories and their resolutions will empower patients, clinical staff and digital developers to help transform digital healthcare to make it safer and more effective.
List of contents
- 1.: How to read this book
- PART 1: Diagnosis - riskier than you think
- 2: We don't know what we don't know
- 3: Cat Thinking
- 4: Dogs dancing
- 5: Fatal overdose
- 6: Swiss Cheese
- 7: Victims and second victims
- 8: Side-effects and scandals
- 9: The scale of the problem
- 10: Medical apps and bug blocking
- PART 2: Treatment - Finding solutions
- 11: Cars have got safer
- 12: Safety Two
- 13: Computational Thinking
- 14: Risky calculations
- 15: Who's accountable?
- 16: Regulation needs fixing
- 17: Safe and secure
- 18: Who profits?
- 19: Interoperability
- 20: Human Factors
- 21: Computer Factors
- 22: User Centered Design
- 23: Iterative Design
- 24: Wedge Thinking
- 25: Attention to detail
- 26: Planes have got safer
- 27: Stories for developers
- 28: Finding bugs
- 29: Choose safety
- Part 3: Prognosis - a better future
- 30: Signs of life
- 31: The pivotal pandemic?
- 32: Living happily ever after
- 33: Good reading
- 34: Notes
- 35: Healthcare openness and acknowledgements
About the author
Prof Harold Thimbleby is See Change Fellow in Digital Health, based at Swansea University, Wales. He is Expert Advisor on IT to the Royal College of Physicians, a member of the World Health Organization's Patient Safety Network, and an advisor to the Clinical Human Factors Group and to the UK Medicines Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Although a professor of computer science, he is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Edinburgh Royal College of Physicians, and of the Royal Society of Arts; he's also a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. He has been a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award Holder and a Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow, and he is 28th Gresham Professor of Geometry. Harold won the British Computer Society's Wilkes Medal and his last book, Press On: Principles of Interaction Programming (MIT Press), won several international awards.
Summary
New technologies like AI, medical apps and implants seem very exciting but they too often have bugs and are susceptible to cyberattacks. Even well-established technologies like infusion pumps, pacemakers and radiotherapy aren't immune.
Until digital healthcare improves, digital risk means that patients may be harmed unnecessarily, and healthcare staff will continue to be blamed for problems when it's not their fault.
This book tells stories of widespread problems with digital healthcare. The stories inspire and challenge anyone who wants to make hospitals and healthcare better. The stories and their resolutions will empower patients, clinical staff and digital developers to help transform digital healthcare to make it safer and more effective.
This book is not just about the bugs and cybersecurity threats that affect digital healthcare. More importantly, it's about the solutions that can make digital healthcare much safer.
Additional text
This is a brilliant and hugely enjoyable book which should be compulsory reading for anyone with high-level responsibility for patient care.
