When you are in the hospital recovering from surgery or getting treatment for an illness, your concern is getting well so you can get discharged and go home. You don’t focus on the equipment being used in your hospital room or in any of the exam areas where you’re taken. However, these devices do fail and sometimes, that can cause damaging results.

A recent article published in Med Device Online discusses the affect of medical device failure with nurses, the people who are around the patients the most while in the hospital. The article states that half of those nurses interviewed have witnessed a medical error due to the lack of communication between devices. Ninety three percent believe devices should be able to share data seamlessly and 60% of those nurses believe that potentially deadly errors can be reduced if sharing data between devices becomes a reality.

According to the article, 400,000 deaths in the US are caused by preventable medical errors and cost billions of dollars. The nurses suggest that many of these errors can be blamed on devices that fail to communicate with each other.  The devices ability to communicate with each other would free up some of the nurses’ time for patients.

As your St. Louis medical device attorney, we are here to help. If you or someone you know has experienced difficulties due to medical device failure, please contact us today!