Bad Code Kills

What happens when your electronic medical records (EMR) system, housing thousands of patient records, suffers, from a sickness of its own? A sickness known as a mapping error? In 2003, that’s exactly what happened at St. Mary’s Mercy Medical Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And guess what happened? 8,500 patients “died.” Well no, not really. Patients who had procedures done from October 25 through December 11 of the previous year “died” according to a glitch in the hospital’s patient management system. Oops. Good news: They were not dead! Bad news: The system still thought they were dead. And treated them that way. And that system told other systems. Jeremy and Alyssa examine the very real-world consequences of this coding error. How could this happen? Could it happen again? Tune in to find out.

Coming Fall 2020, the podcast Bad Code Kills is part history lesson, part topical conversation on code and life, mixed with a dollop of coding rant. It is designed to inform, educate, and entertain listeners of all backgrounds on the importance of good code, the disastrous effects of bad code, and why that matters more than ever in this technological utopian hellscape. Each episode will retell the story of one coding mishap that had a profound (and sometimes deadly) result. We’re talking planes and missiles literally falling out of the sky; cancer patients seeking medical help and getting the exact opposite; and democracy falling to its knees — all because of coding mistakes, lazy coding, or just plain ol’ patriotism, stupidity, or greed.