Dartmouth Events

The Best Way to Improve Healthcare is to Improve Computers

Harold Thimbleby, Professor of Computer Science, Swansea University, co-sponsored by the CS Colloquium. Part of "The Human Factor in Security Technology" speaker series.

Thursday, April 23, 2015
4:15pm – 5:15pm
Carson L02
Intended Audience(s): Public
Categories: Lectures & Seminars

Abstract

Preventable error in hospitals kills many more people than are killed on the roads. Everybody worries about car safety and developing (and using!) safety devices like air bags. We don't do anything comparable in healthcare. A lot of reasons conspire to make hospitals very unsafe places to be, and particularly unsafe to use software-based systems (patient records, infusion pumps, medical apps, etc). We will present some eye-opening examples, and then look for points of leverage. That we need to improve the quality of programming will be made embarrassingly obvious in this lecture. However, how to get the beleaguered healthcare system to demand improved quality is another problem.

The talk will be of interest to anyone who works in or has been a patient in a hospital. Programmers, developers, manufacturers will be challenged.

Bio

Prof Harold Thimbleby FIET CEng FRCPE FLSW HonFRSA HonFRCP is an internationally respected computer scientist, with a particular interest in human error and healthcare IT. His research team won the 2014 GE Healthcare Award for Outstanding Impact in Healthcare. He has been a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award holder and a Leverhulme Trust Fellow. He is an Expert Advisor on IT to the Royal College of Physicians. His book Press On (MIT Press) won several international prizes. He has given over 500 invited talks in 30 different countries. His web site is harold.thimbleby.net

http://www.ists.dartmouth.edu/events/abstract-thimbleby.html

For more information, contact:
Karen Page

Events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.