Thanks to Anonymous for this
link.
“A proposal for open-source anesthesia software heightens the
drama of the question: Who’s at fault when software fails?”
“Heart rate, pulse, temperature, blood oxygenation levels —
there’s a lot to keep track of when a patient undergoes anesthesia.
And that’s just the beginning. Anesthetic gases and intravenous
knock-out drugs come in a bewildering variety, and even the best
anesthesiologists don’t always know exactly how the drugs will
interact with a human body. A lot can go wrong — a mistake can
lead to brain death in a flash.”
“When he isn’t in the operating room taking care of patients,
Harms is hacking on the five computers in his basement. And he
thinks he knows how to achieve his dream of low-cost, reliable
anesthesia software — by going the open-source route. Last year,
Harms founded LAMDI, the Linux Anesthesia Modular Device Interface.
Harms thinks that the open-source software development model, in
which the source code to a program is made freely available to the
general public for redistribution and modification, offers fruitful
possibilities for addressing anesthesiological software needs.”