Y2K

Laura Bruce cites a few hospital administrators' positions on Y2K in the Human Help is the RX for Y2K Hospital Patients article (1999) on the bankrate.com web page. The first, Ben Lee, who is also the Y2K project director of Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, says "there are 70 acres of buildings, 13,000 pieces of medical equipment and 12,000 computers. Each department has two Y2K representatives, who are responsible for making sure everything in their department is Y2K ready- (p. 2). Also, Jim Wagner, Chief Information Officer of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, stated that the position of its hospitals is to test all pieces of equipment that could possibly be life threatening. .
             Due to the nature of the medical industry the Food and Drug Administration (1999) is working very carefully to ensure that products, production and distribution channels are completely operational and complaint before January 1, 2000. Many surveys have been performed to assess the readiness of the industry both on an operational and technical front. "The FDA action on medical devices came amid concerns that the health industry may be one of the most vulnerable to problems from computers that read only the last two digits in dates and mistake 2000 for 1900- (p. 1) as found in the USA Today Tech Report (1999). The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) publication FDA Talk Paper (1999) reports that about 2,000 of the United States 13,500 medical supply manufactures produce devices that could be possibly be affected by Y2K problems through the computer components. The majority of these items are not date dependant for operational purposes. It concludes in the FDA Consumer magazine (1999) that Medical manufacturers producing products dependant upon computer components will fall subject to the normal regulatory processes. These processes include comprehensive manufacturing evaluations that will ensure product safety should minimize the possibly of putting patients at risk.