Personal Medical Devices (2)
But, says Shneiderman, NIH (National Institutes of Health) is unwilling to fund
research into interfaces to devices, and visualization of data -- because medicine
has traditionally not focused on these "peripheral" areas. In his book “
Leonardo's
Laptop”, Shneiderman uses some disturbing examples of medical interfaces gone wrong
-- with disastrous results -- and points to Peter Neumann's document “Illustrative
Risks to the Public in the Use of Computer Systems and Related Technology”. (Neumann
is the moderator of comp.risks on Usenet -- a distributed Internet discussion system
-- as well as chair of the ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy.)
This is one of the great frustrations for me (and many others) in academia -- the
pigeonholing of research, and the difficulty in obtaining support and funding for
research that crosses over disciplinary boundaries, no matter how important it may
be. My hope that weblogs are a start towards breaking down those boundaries may
be naive, but I cling to it anyways...
This article is based on a blog entry entitled “personal medical devices” (sic),
posted on Mamamusings.net (which we assume was written by Mamamusings’ host, Elizabeth
Lane Lawley); the original article can be read at:
http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/03/12/personal_medical_devices.php).
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