RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Tuesday 17 May 2005 Volume 23 : Issue 87
ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
Peter G. Neumann, moderator, chmn ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
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Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 19:29:59 EDT
From: Ken Knowlton
Subject: The Downside of Wired Hospitals
"Computers are making hospitals more dangerous, new research suggests.
Computer keyboards fester with colonies of bacteria, which can easily spread from the medical personnel who use them to the patients they treat.
Some hospitals now have computers in every patient room, creating even more opportunities for contamination. Researchers at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago found that the types of bacteria commonly found in hospitals – some resistant to antibiotics – could survive on a keyboard for 24 hours. Simply cleaning the computers with soap and water didn't make
a difference.
Using a strong disinfectant did kill the germs –
but it also damaged the computers.
'The difficulty with keyboards is you can't pour
bleach on them,' Dr. Allison McGreer of Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital tells The Canadian Press. 'They don't work so well when you do that.' Because it's nearly impossible to keep keyboards sterile, researchers say, the onus is on doctors and nurses to wash their hands vigorously and often."
[Excerpted from *The Week*, 29 May 2005]
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*Tell me about it! I just tried to "clean" the keyboard
of my iBook. Those delicate, complex little plastic
levers and hinges *under* the keys... They're like
a Petri dish! Plus I've carried this inoculant around
the planet repeatedly.
