by Dane, Max
“It sterilizes you, using ultraviolet light-waves. It’s very fast, and guarantees you won’t be carrying any uninvited bugs with you when you enter,” she said.
He shrugged and stepped inside.
He saw two lights in front of him, one red and one green.
The green light went off, the red light came on. Within a few seconds he felt a slight burning sensation all over, and then a big whoosh of air. The door opened on the far side, and he stepped out.
“Ryan, are you all right?”
“Yes,” he said, but he actually felt like he had been in the sun too long.
Looking for Marty, they ran to catch up.
He had grabbed a pushcart, and was walking up to a counter, which seemed to be some sort of a medical supply room. Ryan watched as he held up a small electronic tablet to one of several scanners, and an attendant brought him a syringe, a small bandage, some gauze and few other small items.
Ryan said, “What’s he doing?”
”Oh, he’s just shown the supply room operator which procedure he’s going to perform, and they have given him the necessary supplies.”
Marty looked everything over and satisfied, moved on. Following behind, Lisa and Ryan soon found themselves in a room watching as Marty waved his tablet over the bed frame. After it beeped, he prepared to give the patient an injection. Ryan raised his hand and stepped forward.
“Wait Marty, before you give him the shot, I just have to ask, how do you know you have the right patient?”
Marty said, “Well, I’m looking for bed number 655, and this is its location. Also, my tablet would indicate if I was at the wrong bed, with a small alarm.”
“So, you verify that the bed you’re standing next to, is the correct bed?”
Marty looked a little perturbed, “Yes.”
“So how do you know that the patient in that bed is the correct patient?”
Lisa answered, “When a person is admitted to the facility, they are assigned a bed number.” Ryan thought about that as Marty went back to work.
“Lisa, do you never find patients in the wrong beds?” he asked.
“Sometimes we do,” she said, “but look closely and you’ll see that the patient is wearing a hospital wristband. It is linked to the specific bed he’s been assigned, and only the hospital registrar can remove it.”
She leaned closer to Ryan, “If the patient is out of his bed it sends a signal to the nurses’ desk. If the signal remains active for more than a few minutes, the staff will run an automated sweep of the floor. Then they locate the patient and help them back to their own bed.”
He considered the logic in their security, and couldn’t find any flaws.
“Really Ryan, it’s foolproof.”
He was getting tired of hearing people tell him that.
“It certainly seems so.”
He looked at the time and said, “Thank you Lisa, this has been very helpful. May I call you if I have more questions?”
“Absolutely, it was my pleasure,” she said.
Ryan made his way back to the elevator, and then to his office.
It was a solid system. It was simple and clear, too. The possibility of human error had been eliminated. At least it certainly seemed so, and clearly they thought so.
Feeling a little frustrated, he put his notes away, retrieved his things and headed home. The words ‘fool proof’ were still ringing in his ears when he sat down to dinner.
Meanwhile in Dr. Bender’s labs, it was another late night for Jeff.
He’d been able to get his grad students back to work, but now he was stuck with a supply issue regarding some much-needed tissue samples.
Working within his personal network of lab administrators, he had finally tracked down acceptable samples, but could not come up with the proper medium to perform the experiment. Speaking to a small image of someone who looked equally tired, on his computer display, Jeff thought he was near to success.
“Look Mark, if you will let me have the samples and the medium, I will let you use our buckets for one full week.”
“Jeff, I’m going to need two weeks, and they will need to be cleaned first. I’m not putting those things in our centrifuge as they are now.”
Damn.
He was right.
They were a mess, and it would take a day or two of soaking in a solvent to clean them properly. Then he remembered he had a second set still in the boxes. He’d been saving them for another experiment, but he needed those samples now.
With a grimace he said, “Ok Mark, I’ll send one of my grad students by in the morning to bring you the buckets. Just make sure to have the samples ready.”
The man on the screen nodded; problem solved.
He looked through his lab storeroom and found the centrifuge buckets his friend Mark wanted to borrow. After removing them from their boxes, he placed them on a counter outside and left a note for one his students.
Looking at the clock, he sighed. He still had to shut everything down before he could go home. He would be late for dinner again, and his wife would not be pleased.
He began turning off his lights and powering down their microscopes.
At least he’d been able to find the tissue samples for Bender.
Not too bad for a Monday.
For Ryan, Tuesday passed with little or no change.
Ryan continued to review his findings. Each day he would take a new set of ID information for another couple of fields to Jim, to run more field comparisons. They began calling it simply, ‘Jim’s Test’. Each afternoon he would get the results back from the ‘Jim’s Test’ of the previous day.
Always the results were negative.
Wednesday came, and he was still waiting to try the data-entry interface David and Jim were working on. They were having some difficulty arranging this, but they seemed confident they could prepare it for him soon.
Ryan had not visited them yet today and was going to head over there in just a few minutes. He was still looking for more field ID information for today’s ‘Jim’s test’.
He had decided to look for a very recent treatment, and sorted them by date. He then decided to search by the most widely used treatment. The search yielded a treatment that was as recent as within a couple of weeks, and apparently used many times. Picking a specific field, he sent Jim the ID information and headed over to their area.
“Hey guys, how are you doing today?” he said.
Both David and Jim looked a little fatigued.
“We’re trying to write a new test program for a small disc array in a lab. Apparently, they need it to measure data recorded when some sort of particles pass through their cell samples,” said David, “No problem right?”
He pointed to a Chinese operating manual on his desk.
”Well the operating system was written in Chinese and it isn’t talking to any of our terminals.”
Jim looked up at Ryan, rubbing his temples.
“Ryan, I’m sorry about the delay. I finished your data input test-bed. I can have it ready for you to pound on, shortly.”
David said, “Assuming we get the Chinese hardware problem fixed today.”
”I think it’s done Dave, take a look,” said Jim as he turned back to Ryan, “When I send you the path, just log in as usual, and try it out. If it doesn’t make sense, come and get me.”
Excited, Ryan said, “Wonderful, thanks Jim. I’m really eager to try it out. By the way, I sent you the field ID stuff for today’s ‘Jim’s test’.”
“Oh sure, and I sent you the results from yesterday’s test just a few minutes ago, still nothing to report.” Jim continued, “Hold on just a second and let me check the data you sent me today.”
After a short pause, he said, “Wow, Ryan you hit the mother lode on this one.”
Ryan didn’t understand, “What do you mean ‘the mother lode’?”
“Hold on just a sec,” Jim said as he typed furiously, “…yep, it looks like this treatment, whatever it wa
s, was repeated over two million times; 2,329,005 to be exact.”
“That’s odd; are you sure you’re reading that right? I picked one that was very recent, from within the last two weeks, in fact. How could it have been performed that many times in just two weeks?” said Ryan.
Jim pointed to a number-counter field on the data input form. It was in the margin on the screen and seemed to be nothing more than an innocuous string of numbers.
”That’s the number of times the treatment has been performed.”
“Hmm, wow that is a lot isn’t it. I guess I could pick another one if it causes a problem with the test.”
Turning back to his terminal, Jim said, “Oh no, that won’t be a problem at all. I’ll just let it run tonight, and send you the results tomorrow.”
“Thanks guys. As always, I really do appreciate your help.”
Ryan thought about the ‘test-bed’ program on the way back to his office.
He suddenly remembered he still needed to have a treatment to input, but didn’t have a clue what to use. Jim and Dave were stretched pretty thin. He decided to try his new friend Jeff Sarin, in Bender’s lab. Even if he couldn’t help, maybe he could tell Ryan who to call. It was certainly worth a try.
Sitting at his desk, Ryan activated his televid.
After a moment, Jeff’s face appeared on the screen.
“Dr. Sarin, I mean Jeff, this is Ryan Dane, you helped me the other day with-” Ryan heard a lot of thumping, and wondered if Jeff had dropped the phone.
On the other end, Jeff was signing for some supplies and had to set the phone down.
After a short pause he said, “Ryan, I’m here. Sorry about that. Yes, I remember you, what can I do for you?”
“Well, the programmers here have put together a test-bed version of the same manual interface some of your prescribing research faculty are using. I’m going to experiment with it and look for any sign of the errors, like what we’ve seen. I could use your help with a procedure. Could you send me a short simple procedure, with the necessary medical language that I could enter and test?”
“Yes, that shouldn’t be a problem. Look for something from me later this afternoon or tomorrow morning,” said Jeff.
“Wonderful, thank you very much Jeff, I appreciate your time.” Ryan was excited to get started.
Smiling now, he realized he was finally getting somewhere.
That night Ryan put Alex in bed, and went back downstairs to watch the news. The weather was going to be dry for the rest of the week. He heard another story about new energy available for housing. This time it was on the edge of the south side of the city, leading towards the coast. He was about to change the channel when he heard someone mention that the city’s population of 2,359,215 now had free energy for their homes.
He said to Jean, “That’s weird, did you hear that?”
“No, what are you talking about?”
“That number, they just said for the census of the city. It was 2 million something.”
Grabbing the remote he re-wound the program and listened again, “… 2,359,215 now have free energy for their homes.”
“I don’t understand, what’s weird about that?”
“Well, it’s probably just a coincidence, but that’s almost the same exact number of trials on a particular treatment I found, while I was working at IntelliHealth today.”
Jean didn’t respond, she was concentrating on a website she was browsing for some information on agility training for the dog.
Ryan changed the channel and found an old episode of Star Trek. Something about Picard, Worf and some Klingons. He always liked the Klingons when he was a kid.
And that was the last thing he remembered before being poked by Jean.
“Ryan wake up and come to bed. Wake up. You fell asleep on the couch again.”
He managed to make it to the bedroom and fell into bed.
The next day was Thursday, and Ryan was back at work and still waiting for Jim’s data-entry program. He received the results from yesterday’s ‘Jim’s test,’ and saw that there were again no discrepancies found. Frustrated, he went back to that treatment with the huge number count, to look at it again. Pulling it up, he began to scroll through the screens as he had done yesterday.
Going further than before, he came upon something that stopped him.
A single short field read, ‘Rn186’; he stared at the identifier.
This treatment was the vaccination against the virus Rn186.
And the number of trials was nearly the same as the total population of the city.
Something didn’t feel right.
‘Why is this weird to me?’ he thought.
He called Jean at work, “Jean, can you talk?”
“Yes, but only for a few minutes. What’s up?”
Jean had two patients undergoing scans in separate rooms, and apparently there was an angry woman with some sort of complaint at the front desk.
They would be calling her to help any minute.
“The census number of the city last night, do you remember it?”
“Ryan, this is why you are calling me. Really?” Jean looked annoyed.
“2,359,215. That was the number. It was almost the same as the number of trials for a procedure I was looking at, at work.”
“Yeah, so?” she was getting impatient.
“It’s the number of vaccinations for Rn186. The treatment I was looking at was the vaccination.”
“I’m sorry Ryan, but I’m still not seeing your point. Wasn’t the idea in the first place to inoculate everyone? You know protect us from the virus, carrying the virus, spreading it and all that good stuff?”
What she was saying made perfect sense.
“Yes, that’s right. That was the idea.”
“Ok then, so what’s the problem?”
He was looking out the window, confused.
“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t know, I guess nothing.”
“I have to go, I’ll see you tonight.”
At the last second, he asked Jean, “Has Alex been vaccinated yet?”
“No,” she replied, “I haven’t had time to get him to the doctor’s office yet.”
“Ok, well I’ll see you tonight,” he said and hung up the phone.
Feeling a little unsettled, he turned back to his monitor.
Not quite understanding why, he still felt like there was something wrong about that number.
As he sat there, a message from Jim came; he finally had access to the test-bed. Eager now, he read the message, found the file-path, and looked at the research procedure input screens.
This was how the researchers manually input their prescribed treatments. The first thing he noticed was what a huge difference there was between looking at it from the front-end versus looking at it from the back-end. To date, all he had seen were the unformatted fields with a lot of cryptic ‘X’s masking the information.
This was different.
The layout was beautiful, with plenty of descriptors and intuitive graphics. Everywhere there were input fields with drop-down options, others with room for text, and some that had horizontal or vertical sliders. Hovering over any element of the page produced explanations to assist you.
When he was done looking around he was forced to admit he couldn’t do any more until he received the example procedure from Jeff, upstairs in the lab.
‘Still though,’ he thought, ‘this is cool.’
He sent Jim a quick message to say, ‘Thanks, it seems to be working just fine’.
Just as Ryan was sending his message to Jim, he received a message from Jeff.
‘I’m sorry for the delay, Ryan. The staff I assigned this to had to leave early and didn’t get it done. I will make sure that you get it as soon as possible.’
Disappointed but grateful, Ryan resigned himself to waiting until tomorrow to get started.
Meanwhile, over in Jim’s cubicle, they were looking at a response from the research lab regarding th
e disc-array from China. The lab group was very pleased and grateful that the microscope array was working now, and wanted to ask if Jim and Dave could set up a second one as well.
Jim would need David’s approval before agreeing. David was reading the message, and trying to keep his cool.
“They blew two days of my schedule on this problem, and now they want to do it again?”
“I can do it. I don’t mind David, really. It won’t be difficult to re-use the work we’ve already finished.
“Ok, fine. But we really need to have a protocol in place about hardware and foreign languages.”
David went back to his cubicle while Jim responded to them.
Jim liked their ‘good cop, bad cop’ relationship sometimes.
He smiled and hit send.
Up in the lab, Jeff had just sent a message to Ryan Dane regarding an example of a simple treatment. As often happened, the doctors in his lab had proven unresponsive to his request for the written example. They would do what he asked, but never on time.
Jeff decided to send a student to the lab across the hall.
