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Comment by conk | Hacker News Reader

Modern hospitals are designed to run ‘offline’ from infrastructure such as water, electricity and sewer for a period of time, typically a few days. When there’s a major disaster (earthquake, hurricane, terrorist attack) these services can fail at the exact time that hospitals see a flood of injured people.

I haven’t specifically looked into internet but I’d be surprised if they were unable to provide care with a down internet connection.

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That doesn't mean that what's happening is acceptable.

Imagine a similar scenario but it involved the power being cut, or the water?

Sure hospitals have backup generators that doesn't mean that they should be used for instances like this.

Half true. They will be able to provide emergency care but the normal bureaucracy of healthcare services will shut down if the internet stops working.

... and medical device vendors and patient record systems have done their very best to make that impossible.

Hospitals can work without water, electricity and sewage ... but not without internet. Well, it's possible, but at 50% or so capacity (and I'm sure that number is going up)

A hospital filled up assuming 100% capacity that falls back to 50% capacity, however is going to be VERY tough to keep running for the doctors.

A lot of these systems are locally hosted on hospital infrastructure to guarantee that when internet service goes out, medical records can still be accessed. And I cannot name many hospital medical devices that are Internet connected, rather than just connected to a local Intranet.

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