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+ - Know What Time It Is? Your Medical Device Doesn't->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "A man with one clock knows what time it is, goes the old saw, a man with two is never sure. Imagine the confusion, then, experienced by a doctor with dozens. Julian Goldman is an anaesthetist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. After beginning to administer blood-thinning medication during an urgent neurological procedure in 2005, Mr Goldman noticed that the EMR had recorded him checking the level of clotting 22 minutes earlier. As a result, four hospitals in the northeast had their medical devices checked, and found that on average they were off by 24 minutes. The easy solution that devices could have used since 1985? NTP."
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Comment: Think of the price tag (Score 1) 129

by nani popoki (#39955627) Attached to: Heathkit Educational Systems Closes Shop For Good

When Heathkit was in its heyday, the cost of assembly was a very large part of the cost of the product. With the advent of automated assembly, the labor cost became insignificant and a kit could no longer compete on price. In fact, the kit became MORE expensive because of the cost of developing a by-the-number assembly manual. The kit-building community kept Heathkit going even then for a while.

But I remember the last Heathkit I constructed. It was an FM radio tuner. The "kit" came with a palletized, pre-assembled circuit board. Instead of mounting parts and soldering, you snapped the various boards apart -- the interconnect cables were already attached -- assembled the chassis and screwed the boards in place. There were two solder connections -- for the power cord! And the "kit" was about 30% more expensive than a similar tuner from Radio Shack.

Q: Why was Stonehenge abandoned? A: It wasn't IBM compatible.

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