Error and Injury in Computers & Medical Devices Computers are
playing an increasing role in everyday life, so it is not
surprising that incidents involving computers have become a
common matter of litigation. In a wide variety of technical,
financial and other situations, people make decisions and
perform responses based on the appearance of a computer screen.
The increased reliance on computer controlled devices in
medicine is particularly noteworthy because of the critical
safety issues involved. As I will discuss below, this produces
conflicts among the usual goals of interface design,
intuitiveness and ease-of-use, and the safety of patients. When
error occurs, the question naturally arises as to how one can
apportion responsibility between the human and the computer: was
the computer poorly designed or was the human negligent? In many
cases, the critical component of the computer is its interface.
Users/operators generally do not understand the computer's inner
world of bits, bytes, files, ram, etc. Rath