Daily Archives: March 8, 2007

Time change could affect medical devices

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an advisory to alert hospital officials, healthcare workers, people who rely on medical devices and their caregivers about possible adverse affects of the new Daylight Savings Time (DST) change on some medical equipment and suggestions on how to prevent them.

It’s unknown if any problems will develop or what specific devices may be affected. The FDA is concerned about medical devices or medical device networks that operate together with other networked devices, e.g. where a synchronization of clocks may be necessary.

If a medical device or medical device network is adversely affected by the new DST date changes, a patient treatment or diagnostic result could be:

  • incorrectly prescribed
  • provided at the wrong time
  • missed
  • given more than once
  • given for longer or shorter durations than intended
  • incorrectly recorded
  • Any of these unpredictable events could harm patients and not be obvious to clinicians responsible for their care.

    Continue reading