Conçue pour sauver des vies, mais entraînant la mort

Some of us may have been unlucky enough in our lifetime to have stayed in the hospital, whether it was for minor injuries or perhaps a more serious problem. Personally, I can see myself hoisting myself on the table of an imposing white machine which reminded me of a giant Polo mint tablet, which was to be used to diagnose a possible knee injury. I was lying there, listening to the device make all kinds of strange noises as it scanned and located the internal structures of my knee joint. I was wondering how it all worked. I felt perfectly safe, locked in this expensive-looking machine; it's a safe bet that I was fully protected from a possible malfunction. But imagine a little that the safety devices built into the device and intended to manage the amount of radiation emitted were defective?

This is what happened a few years ago with a medical device called Therac-25. A more recent version of the Therac-20 and Therac-6 devices, this machine was designed to target and eliminate cancer cells. During the design and manufacture of this medical device, essential safety mechanisms were neglected, or even purely and simply eliminated, with the conviction that high-performance software would be able to identify and prevent any possible problem. Result: this resulted in a series of deaths, caused by the malfunction of the software controlling the Therac-25 when certain conditions were met. As exciting as it is scary, this Hackaday article proves how important it is to follow and adhere to strict risk analysis processes during the design, manufacture, testing and use of all types of machines, medical and non-medical.

Imagine that you created a machine designed to help people, but instead it ends up killing them? If designing machines is part of your job, check this space regularly. DesignSpark is indeed preparing to release a tool that will be useful to you.

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