Internal Bug: Code Flaw May Lead to Wrong Dose From Infusion Pump 86
chicksdaddy writes "The steady drumbeat of disturbing news about vulnerable, IP enabled medical devices continues this week, after medical device maker Hospira said it has issued a voluntary recall of its Symbiq-brand drug infusion pumps after discovering a software error that may cause touch interfaces on the pumps to not respond to user touches or to display dosage information that is inaccurate. The problem was detected in around 1.5% of Symbiq One Channel and Two Channel Infusers (model numbers 16026 and 16027), but could potentially affect 'all Symbiq infusion systems currently in the field.' The software bug could result in 'a delayed response and or the screen registering a different value from the value selected by the user,' the company said in a statement."
Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
How do you teach that to nursing students?
Re:Therac-25 (Score:5, Interesting)
The statement about how the lesson can't be taught to profit seeking enterprises is a load of crap. I have worked in both the area of distributed control systems as well as financial transaction processing (which are both self regulated), and we ALWAYS took situations like this VERY serious. We tested and tested and tested and tried to cover all conditions BEFORE we hit the market. Did the testing cut into our sinister profits, yes, but we knew that peoples lives and livelihoods were on the hook. Are there some companies that don't care, sure, but they will always exist regardless of operating environment.
My own medical device software mistake. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wrote all the "C" code which controlled a robotic bone lengthening device. (Read up on the ilizarov procedure.) At the most basic, it is used to make your legs or arms longer, a tiny bit per day, just over an inch per month of growth. The doctors would break the bone, after having installed an external mechanical frame holding you together. They would slowly lengthen the mechanical frame by 1mm every day. They would use wrenches and do it four times a day, 1/4mm per lengthening. Our machine would do it once per minute (growing your bone at 604 nanometers additional length per minute.) I used a table in ROM of how many pulses to do, how often. A couple of the entries were wrong and resulted in the wrong amount of bone lengthening.