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Medical Equipment Crashes During Heart Procedure Because of Antivirus Scan

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Re: Medical Equipment Crashes During Heart Procedure Because of Antivirus Scan

#2
/rant/

I can't tell you how many times we've chased down field problems that ultimately were the result of antivirus scans. It's been so bad, that one of the first questions we now ask when we get a tool-down report is "is there antivirus running and what is the configuration?"

Bringing Windows into the architecture of any type of capital equipment control system is a bane. A scourge. I mean to say, it really is a misappropriation of software. Imagine, "Yeah, Frank only knows VB, so that's what we used for the aircraft's cockpit GUI."

/xrant/

Re: Medical Equipment Crashes During Heart Procedure Because of Antivirus Scan

#3

/rant/ I can't tell you how many times we've chased down field problems that ultimately were the result of antivirus scans. It's been so bad, that one of the first questions we now ask when we get a tool-down report is "is there antivirus running and what is the configuration?" Bringing Windows into the architecture of any type of capital equipment control system is a bane. A scourge. I mean to say, it really is a mi…

I would expect these kinds of systems to be running a soft realtime OS. Or at the very least a run of the mill OS with no extraneous software running in the background.

Re: Medical Equipment Crashes During Heart Procedure Because of Antivirus Scan

#5
>> The antivirus was configured to scan for viruses every hour, and the scan started right in the middle of the procedure.

>> The company claims that they included proper instructions in their documentation, advising companies to whitelist Merge Hemo's folders in order to prevent crashes from happening, so it seems that the whole incident was nothing more than an oversight on the medical unit's side.

So "RTFM"? Not very helpful.

Re: Medical Equipment Crashes During Heart Procedure Because of Antivirus Scan

#6

/rant/ I can't tell you how many times we've chased down field problems that ultimately were the result of antivirus scans. It's been so bad, that one of the first questions we now ask when we get a tool-down report is "is there antivirus running and what is the configuration?" Bringing Windows into the architecture of any type of capital equipment control system is a bane. A scourge. I mean to say, it really is a mi…

correlation doesn't imply causation.... except when someone selected windows, and then made 50 other moronic decisions also.

half the work done in this industry is just dealing with stupid decisions made by stupid people. i just accept this now.

Re: Medical Equipment Crashes During Heart Procedure Because of Antivirus Scan

#9

/rant/ I can't tell you how many times we've chased down field problems that ultimately were the result of antivirus scans. It's been so bad, that one of the first questions we now ask when we get a tool-down report is "is there antivirus running and what is the configuration?" Bringing Windows into the architecture of any type of capital equipment control system is a bane. A scourge. I mean to say, it really is a mi…

correlation doesn't imply causation.... except when someone selected windows, and then made 50 other moronic decisions also. half the work done in this industry is just dealing with stupid decisions made by stupid people. i just accept this now.

But when Windows is chosen because it is easier to find coders who will 'remain within the budget' (cheapcheap) and cannot even make sure the virus scanner doesn't run during procedures or at all it goes a bit too far.

Re: Medical Equipment Crashes During Heart Procedure Because of Antivirus Scan

#10

Why on earth is medical equipment running standard Windows? This is the ideal location for some basic RTOS or even just an embedded Linux. Seems like a huge cost and risk for no gain.

That was my first thought too. And why there is an anti-virus running? This equipment should not be connected to the internet nor some staff should plug-in a flash drive on the first place.
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