Software engineering for future healthcare and clinical systems (April 2006)

Summary

Systems and software engineering contribute not only to advancing and improving the delivery of healthcare but also to doing it more safely than has been the case in the past.

Content

Turning "To err is human, but to really screw up, you need a computer" on its head, in 1999 the Institute of Medicine's To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health Care System recommended that healthcare professionals focusing on patient safety should increase their understanding of how information technology could be applied to deliver safer care. This recommendation was made as part of the approach to reducing errors in the delivery of care leading to the death of as many as 98,000 US citizens annually.

Much of the subsequent response to that challenge has focused on increasing the capabilities of enterprise hospital and clinical information systems—for example, implementing order-entry systems to check for drug allergies when writing prescriptions. But IT and patient care also come together at the bedside in the medical equipment and instrumentation systems used to deliver direct patient care—for example, smart infusion pumps that help ensure that the right dose of the right drug is administered to the right patient.

The articles in this special issue of Computer will touch on both types of systems, while focusing primarily on the application of software and systems engineering to software-based medical devices and device systems used at the bedside.