System Safety for the 21st Century, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 29Future Considerations

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, a discussion about health care future is presented and as it relates to system safety. It is the purpose not to go into detail, but to highlight some of the major areas of expectation and improvement. The past 50 years have brought so many new and beneficial advances to medical science and to the betterment of mankind. And, who would have predicted most of them? Yes, the future is difficult to predict, but at least some aspects related to medical care can be discussed along with insights about the future, its future direction and that of associated support functions.

The intent of this chapter is additionally two‐fold. First, it is to discuss current health care direction and areas of research and development and second, try to predict the future direction of system safety as a process.

From a system safety standpoint, change that brings mission improvements are important and mostly needed. Any change, however, needs to be carefully assessed to ensure the undesired and unanticipated hazards or risk is not introduced to a system, a process or the enterprise. But first, it’s important to define some terms that may not be familiar.

DEFINITIONS

Even in recent times terminology is changing, so in this section some of those newer terms are defined to ensure clarity.

Medical Artificial Intelligence (AI)

According to the journal, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, medical AI may be characterized as the scientific discipline ...